Byte-Sized Overview
Andrew Detmer is a withdrawn Seattle teenager living with an abusive father and a seriously ill mother. He begins filming his daily life, using the camera as both a barrier against the people around him and a record of what happens inside his increasingly unstable home.
After Andrew, his cousin Matt and popular student Steve investigate a mysterious object buried beneath the ground, all three develop telekinetic abilities. What begins with harmless experiments and adolescent pranks gradually evolves into flight, extraordinary strength and the ability to manipulate increasingly heavy objects.
The experience brings Andrew friendship and confidence for the first time. It also gives enormous power to someone carrying years of humiliation, anger and untreated trauma.
Chronicle uses found-footage filmmaking to imagine how teenagers might genuinely respond to sudden superhuman abilities. There are no costumes, secret headquarters or carefully prepared speeches about responsibility. There are, however, several extremely poor decisions made while airborne.
Chronicle
Release Year: 2012
Director: Josh Trank
Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Ashley Hinshaw
Runtime: 83 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Production Company: 20th Century Fox, Davis Entertainment Company, Dune Entertainment
Subgenre Tags: Telekinesis, Found Footage, Superhuman Abilities, Science Fiction Thriller, Psychological Science Fiction, Teen Science Fiction
Why Chronicle Is Worth Watching
Chronicle approaches superhuman abilities from the perspective of three ordinary teenagers who have grown up surrounded by superhero stories but possess none of the moral preparation usually supplied by them. Their first instinct is not to fight crime. It is to test what they can lift, play practical jokes and work out whether telekinesis can help them fly.
That response gives the film an appealing early naturalism. Andrew, Matt and Steve behave like friends who have discovered an extraordinary secret rather than characters waiting for a conventional origin story to begin. Their powers develop through practice, resembling muscles that become stronger through repeated use.
The found-footage format is particularly well suited to Andrew. His camera is not merely a device required by the genre. It protects him from confrontation, gives him a sense of control and places emotional distance between himself and a hostile environment.
As Andrew’s telekinesis develops, the camera gains movement of its own. He can float it around himself, allowing the film to escape the restricted framing that often makes found footage visually monotonous. Later, security cameras, mobile phones and news footage expand the perspective as Andrew’s private crisis becomes publicly destructive.
Dane DeHaan gives the film its most important performance. Andrew’s pain is understandable, but his actions become increasingly frightening. The film does not ask the audience to excuse what he does. It shows how power amplifies his isolation and removes the limits that previously contained his anger.
At only 83 minutes, Chronicle moves with unusual efficiency. Some relationships and ideas would have benefited from more development, particularly Steve’s role within the friendship, but the film rarely wastes time. It delivers an inventive combination of teenage drama, psychological tragedy and unconventional superhero science fiction.
Deep Dive Highlights
- Power as a developing ability: Telekinesis begins with small objects, nosebleeds and intense concentration. As the teenagers practise, their control and physical endurance improve, giving the powers an internal logic without burying the story beneath technical explanation.
- A believable teenage response: Matt, Steve and Andrew use their abilities to move cars, frighten strangers, perform tricks and play catch in the sky. Their experiments feel impulsive and joyful before the consequences become serious.
- Andrew behind the camera: Filming allows Andrew to observe life without fully participating in it. The camera documents his mistreatment, but it also reflects his growing tendency to view other people as subjects rather than equals.
- Dane DeHaan’s performance: DeHaan makes Andrew vulnerable, awkward and increasingly dangerous. His physical manner changes as his powers grow, with anxious withdrawal gradually becoming a cold sense of superiority.
- The three-way friendship: Matt provides Andrew’s only established social connection, while Steve makes a sincere effort to include him. Their shared secret briefly creates a supportive relationship that Andrew has never previously experienced.
- Flying as liberation: The first flight sequence captures the pure excitement of possessing an impossible ability. High above the ground, the three friends are temporarily free from family problems, school hierarchies and social expectations.
- Found footage with mobility: Andrew’s ability to move the camera telekinetically creates smooth tracking shots while remaining consistent with the format. The visual style evolves alongside his powers.
- An unexplained source: The crystalline object beneath the ground causes the transformation but is never fully identified. The film remains focused on the consequences of power rather than constructing a mythology around where it came from.
- The absence of intervention: Andrew’s distress is visible to relatives, teachers and other students, but no effective support reaches him. His powers do not create his suffering; they allow that suffering to be expressed without ordinary restraint.
- The apex-predator philosophy: Andrew begins describing himself as a superior organism entitled to dominate weaker people. The idea provides an intellectual excuse for cruelty while revealing how completely he has abandoned the connection he once wanted.
- Escalating visual perspective: As Andrew loses control, the film incorporates recordings from witnesses, police vehicles and surveillance systems. His story can no longer remain contained within his personal camera.
- A tragic superhero inversion: Instead of power producing a public protector, it accelerates the collapse of a vulnerable teenager. Matt’s eventual responsibility is not learning how to become a hero but accepting that he may have to stop someone he loves.
Spoiler Mode
Andrew begins filming partly to document the abuse he receives from his alcoholic father, Richard. His mother, Karen, is dying from cancer, and the family cannot afford all the medication and medical care she needs.
Andrew’s cousin Matt invites him to a party in an attempt to draw him out of his isolation. Andrew’s filming irritates another student, and he leaves after a confrontation. Steve Montgomery then asks him to bring the camera to a large hole discovered in the nearby woods.
Andrew, Matt and Steve climb underground and find a glowing crystalline object. It reacts violently as they approach, causing their noses to bleed and disabling the camera.
Several weeks later, the three discover that they can move objects with their minds. They initially experiment with toys and small objects before using the ability for increasingly elaborate practical jokes.
Andrew pushes an aggressive motorist’s vehicle off the road and into a lake. Matt and Steve rescue the driver, but the incident demonstrates how easily their games could become lethal. Matt establishes rules intended to prevent them from using their powers against living beings, acting while angry or exposing themselves publicly.
Their abilities continue growing. They learn to protect their bodies with telekinetic force and eventually discover that they can fly. The three travel above the clouds and discuss going to Tibet together, a rare moment in which Andrew feels fully accepted.
Steve and Matt help Andrew perform at the school talent show, secretly using their powers to create an apparently impossible display of juggling and magic. The performance makes Andrew popular, and he attends a party with new confidence.
The evening ends in humiliation when Andrew becomes ill during an intimate encounter with a female student. His brief social success collapses, reinforcing his belief that acceptance is fragile and that other people will eventually reject him.
Steve later finds Andrew flying alone during a thunderstorm. He attempts to understand what is wrong, but a bolt of lightning strikes Steve and kills him. The exact degree of Andrew’s responsibility remains uncertain. His emotional state and powers appear connected to the event, but the film does not establish that he consciously intended to kill Steve.
At Steve’s funeral, Andrew denies knowing what happened. Matt senses that Andrew is concealing something and becomes increasingly afraid of him.
Andrew’s anger begins turning outwards. He telekinetically tears teeth from the mouths of school bullies and develops a philosophy based on the idea of an apex predator. He claims that stronger beings do not feel guilt about harming weaker ones.
This belief allows Andrew to reinterpret cruelty as natural superiority. It also repeats the logic of his father, who uses physical strength and authority to dominate someone unable to fight back.
Karen’s condition deteriorates, and Andrew needs money for her medication. He attacks local gang members and takes their money before attempting to rob a petrol station.
When the attendant produces a shotgun, Andrew deflects it telekinetically. The weapon fires into a fuel source, causing an explosion that leaves him badly burned and unconscious.
Andrew wakes in hospital under police guard. Richard visits and tells him that Karen has died. He then blames Andrew for not being present, attacking his son while he lies injured.
Andrew awakens his powers and destroys part of the hospital. He lifts Richard into the air and drops him, but Matt arrives and saves his uncle before he hits the ground.
Andrew then begins a violent rampage through Seattle. He throws vehicles, destroys buildings and attacks police officers while cameras across the city capture the destruction.
Matt confronts him and attempts to reach the cousin he remembers. Andrew insists that he has evolved beyond ordinary people and no longer needs to obey their rules. His power has become inseparable from his belief that suffering entitles him to inflict suffering on others.
Their battle moves through the city as both teenagers use telekinesis with increasingly destructive force. Matt continues trying to stop Andrew without killing him, but Andrew attacks nearby civilians and appears ready to cause mass casualties.
Recognising that he has no other option, Matt telekinetically drives the spear of a nearby statue through Andrew’s body. Andrew dies instantly.
The choice saves other lives but leaves Matt as the only surviving member of the group. Steve is dead, Andrew has been killed by his own cousin and the origin of their powers remains unexplained beneath the sealed underground site.
The film ends in Tibet, the destination the three once planned to visit together. Matt places Andrew’s camera facing a monastery and speaks directly to his cousin.
He promises to discover what gave them their abilities and why they were chosen. He also intends to use his power to help people, giving the story the beginning of the heroic purpose that Andrew was never able to reach.
Matt then flies away, leaving the camera behind. Recording is no longer a defensive wall or a means of control. It has become a memorial to the friend he could not save.
Core Question
Do extraordinary powers corrupt someone, or do they remove the restraints that previously concealed what pain and isolation were already doing to them?
Andrew does not become dangerous simply because he acquires telekinesis. For a time, the powers give him friendship, confidence and genuine happiness. They create opportunities for connection that his ordinary life had denied him.
His collapse grows from several forces: sustained abuse, grief, humiliation, isolation and an increasing conviction that power places him above moral responsibility. None of those circumstances excuses his attacks, but ignoring them reduces the story to a warning about one inherently dangerous teenager.
Matt and Steve receive the same powers without following Andrew’s path. Their friendships, confidence and greater social stability provide safeguards that Andrew lacks. Power therefore acts less like a corrupting substance than an amplifier.
The tragedy is not that Andrew was always destined to become a monster. It is that someone visibly in distress gains the ability to become one before anyone offers meaningful help.
Watch If You Like
- Akira: A troubled young man acquires overwhelming psychic power and turns years of resentment against the people and city around him.
- Carrie: Telekinesis, abuse and social humiliation combine in the tragic collapse of an isolated teenager.
- Brightburn: Familiar superhero abilities become terrifying when their young possessor develops a sense of superiority over ordinary people.
- Thelma: A young woman’s emerging supernatural abilities are closely connected to repression, identity and emotional distress.
- Midnight Special: Extraordinary powers place a young person at the centre of a grounded science-fiction story told from an intimate perspective.
- Project Power: Temporary superhuman abilities disrupt ordinary lives and create new opportunities for exploitation and violence.
- Jumper: A young man treats an extraordinary ability as personal freedom before discovering that power carries consequences.
- Super 8: Teenagers document an unexplained event while friendship and family problems shape their encounter with science fiction.
Signal Strength
IMDb currently gives Chronicle a rating of 7.0/10. Rotten Tomatoes reports an 85% critics’ score and an audience score of approximately 71%.
The film received strong reviews for its efficient storytelling, young cast, creative use of found footage and grounded approach to superhuman abilities. Dane DeHaan’s performance attracted particular praise, while the modest production became a substantial commercial success. Criticism has generally focused on the familiar direction of Andrew’s decline, the limited development of Steve and a destructive final act that becomes more conventional than the quieter material preceding it.
Zombie Head’s Take: Chronicle understands that three teenagers given telekinesis would spend some time moving parked cars before considering the moral future of humanity. Its final destruction is familiar, but the friendship, pain and frightening development behind it remain unusually effective.
Zombie Head's independent editorial rating A lean and emotionally convincing superhuman tragedy that uses found footage as part of its character study rather than a decorative gimmick.Zombie Head's Score
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