I’m not quite sure how you could take that away from Cloverfield, but not Chronicle…
At any rate, I thought Chronicle was good, though I preferred the first half to the second. I didn’t think the transition for Andrew was very well explained and was even more abrupt than Two-Face in Dark Knight. I was also annoyed they killed the best character that early in the film.
I also didn’t buy the cops at the end, who continually avoided shooting someone who just murdered a bunch of people and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage.
The “found camera” conceit worked almost as well as in Cloverfield, until it fell apart at the end with the various random camera angles. I did like that the superpowers allowed for more cinematic angles without destroying the conceit. The special effects also were quite good though, particularly for the budget.
Overall, a very good film, that could have been better with a few small tweaks.
Just saw it. Liked it alot. It was a mistake bringing my 12 and 8 year old to it though. It’s always hard to tell with PG13 movies. It was too realistic and violent for my 8 year old (who has seen and been fine with many movies which are more action/violent than this one was). I think it was the realism of the found footage aspect that freaked him out. My 12 year old got barfy about 20 minutes before the end.
Wife is pissed that I brought them but can’t take it back now.
I enjoyed it, although I wish it hadn’t been such a slave to the found footage format. It was good at first, especially when he started levitating the camera, but near the end you could see them reaching to find ways to involve a camera in the scene. Like in the hospital where the cops have a camera set up for some reason.
But in all I think it got closer than any other superhero movie as to how kids would react if they got superpowers. And I loved the flying sequence.
By the time Andrew & Matt are fighting over Seattle neither gives about the “not in public thing”; it’s pretty damn obvious alot of people (including news cameras) are seeing them. Hell every TV channel in the country had probally gone to breaking news and suspending normal programing like on 9/11. This isn’t something that can be covered up or dismissed as a hoax in the sequel.
Aside from the camera in Tibet everything else can be explained away as some government agency recovering all the footage they could get their hands on and editing into some documentary. I’ll see the sequel if there is one. What’s going to happen to Matt? Andrew was pretty damn powerful; the only reason Matt was able to kill him was because he was both severly injured and distracted. I wonder if Matt’s time with Buddhist monks and study of meditation will let him hone his powers to that level.
What would be the setup for a sequel? A new group of people getting powers? Will the producers bring back Matt; as hero, villian, prophet of some weird cult, etc. Clearly the US government is aware of telekinesis and going to do everything possible to figure out what the fuck caused this.
I was half expecting Andrew not to be dead and the camera recorded him smashing it, but thank goodness the film makers didn’t go for that cliche setup.
I think a sequel is possible, but the “found footage” gimmick, as others have pointed out, is wearing a little thin.
I don’t think there was anything that implied he was stealing her drugs. He was drinking away the money they could have used to buy her some drugs, but that’s as far as it goes.