Chronicle and Attack the block textual analysis.

Chronicle vs Attack the block - Draft essay

Chronicle, a sci-fi thriller teen film directed by Josh Tank in 2012 and Attack the block, a sci-fi comedy teen film directed by Joe Cornish in 2011 are films about groups of teenage boys that find a supernatural being; in Chronicle this is a suspected glowing radiation and in Attack the block it is an alien invasion. Chronicle and Attack the block both share a sense of the main characters having a personality transformation when coming into contact with their supernatural being, having to deal with this power. Both directors represent the coming of age through a theme of right of passage although in Chronicle we see Andrew take a wrong turn at this time and received deathly consequences from the geeky shy boy we see at the beginning of the film, whereas in Attack the block, Moses turns his life around dramatically from the troublesome youth he was.

Andrew, a shy, timid boy that gets bullied at school and abused by his father at home from Chronicle comes into contact with the supernatural being later to be discussed to perhaps be radiation with his cousin Matt and very recently discovered friend, Steve. Chronicle follows stereotypical personalities in high school group of friends, Andrew is the stereotypical geek who’s appearance also matches, a small pale skinned boy with a bad, long haircut and terrible fashion sense, Matt, Andrew’s cousin is the stereotypical geek with a big build and good sense of fashion and Steve is an all round popular boy about school with lots of friends and gets good grades, Steve is also black, this makes the film producers cater to a new audience and also avoids being accused as racist because otherwise there would be noone in the film of a different ethnicity to American. At the point that they discover the radiation Steve asks Andrew to come and see what he and Matt had found and if he could record it as the viewer watches the entire film through Andrew’s perspective, this is shown from the beginning through Andrew’s camera. Through filming the film this way the director has given the viewer a bigger insight into the personalities of the 3 boys, this way you see the transformation as they grow into adults through their right of passage. When we see Andrew zoom closer to the radiation with his camera, at this point the camera is handheld and as this happens we see it change from the glow of a pure blue representing innocence to a fiery red, this foreshadows the start and end of Andrew’s character (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4fZV9oaiII – 2.19 onwards). The supernatural being gives Andrew, Matt and Steve the power of telekinesis, they keep this a secret as they don’t want anyone to interfere with what they have found because they subconsciously feel as though they need to act appropriately to how everyone thinks of them and they don’t want to be seen as trouble makers. However, the boys in Attack the Block act in the complete opposite way.

Moses, Pest, Jerome, Dennis and Biggz are all boys living on ‘The block’ where Attack the Block is set. They spend their time being intimidating, pestering and mugging anyone who walks past that doesn’t live on the same council estate targeting mainly the weak. We see an example of this at the very beginning of the film where they animalisticly circle a young nurse named Sam in the dark when she’s on her own. Moses throws her to the ground and threatens her with a knife while the rest watched as he mugged her of all her valuable possessions at this point all of the boys faces are covered, they are mainly dark silhouettes with a glimmer of their eyes in the light. They are only mugging Sam because she is alien to the block, they don’t trust anyone that walks the streets and area of the block and are willing to get rid of anyone that does. Just after they manage to force her to hand over her engagement ring, a bright light is seen in the distance and something crashes into the car beside them, as Sam escapes Moses investigates and discovers the alien and decides they need kill it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz30vlff2kQ(2.05-4.14)). After they do kill it, they don’t hide it like Andrew, Matt and Steve as they’re expected to lie and intimidating so they carry the alien around as a trophy, this represents and fits the stereotypical urban London youth, they just want to scare everyone that they walk past or encounter when they’re being troublesome, they’re not scared of their consequences as they don’t care about anyone else. Their outfits also contribute to how they affect other people too, being dressed in a neck chief covering half their faces and wearing tracksuits is a stereotypical outfit to wear if they’re classed as being a terrorising youth in London’s society, the boys accommodate this stereotype, this shows how childlike and immature they actually are, although they act like

Conspiracy is also a theme in both Chronicle and Attack the block, both groups of boys blame the government for their supernatural finding’s showing they’re all actually quite naïve and willing to blame anyone else that has more power than themselves, they would’ve gained these views from their parents or other adults they have around them showing they’re not yet old enough to have made their own views. Chronicle mentions their supernatural finding to be a hidden mistake of the government’s and that they’ve hidden dangerous radiation underground in their town. Attack the block also mentions the government putting the alien on the block to ‘get all the little black boys like they did with the drugs and guns’. This is because in both America where Chronicle is set and England where Attack the Block is set, children both feel hard done by, by society and by the government due to how their home lives are. By the end of Attack the block you can see Moses at a turning point, no longer being a child and taking his life experiences and turning them into a useful experience to become an adult.

In Chronicle we see Andrew being beaten by his father, bullied at school and his mother dying because they can’t afford the treatment for her to get better, this all contributes to the anger that Andrew has by the end of the film, where he destroys the city and attempts to infact kill his own father. We see Andrew’s anger and violence slowly build throughout the film leading from using his telekinesis to pull slowly rip of a spiders leg’s to his huge downfall where he destroys the city, this shows Andrew never does come of age, he goes from being a mature adult to digressing to a child using his one power that he believes he has greater than that any other human and uses it to get his revenge on all the people he hates, which is the world as he feels hard done by. In Attack the block we see the boys be wrongly accused of criminal offenses and towards the end see Moses living on his own at 15 years old with and uncle that drops in now and again meaning Moses steals and intimidates to survive. We discover this through Moses telling Sam to go to his flat in order to save herself where she see’s the state of his home and then asks him who he lives with and in fact how old he is, she then feels very guilty. Moses also feels let down by the world, which he has been, he’s had to deal with being a child and also taking on the role of his own parent at the same time.

Juxtaposition is used a lot throughout both films both in a way of family, this emphasises the change that we see in Chronicle with Andrew and Attack the Block with Moses. Chronicle juxtaposes Andrew and his cousin Matt throughout the film, after they get their telekinesis they experiment using lego bricks, we see Andrew build the a tower we see later in the film out of the lego and Matt knocks it down (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oe2a0hxe1c 0.28 onwards), we then see during Andrew’s downfall Andrew destroying the real tower and Matt trying to save it(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCzEhRZX4g).  The comparison between two family members as close in age and as different in similarities emphasises Andrew’s downfall and is very effective as most viewers can relate to being compared to a family member that is close in age.

Attack the block also uses juxtaposition in Moses and Hi-Hatz, being leaders of their own ‘gang’s’ but part of the same family sense of the block, makes the comparison of them being brothers. We see Moses as a younger version of Hi-Hatz, we expect him to grow into Hi-hatz but as the film plays out we see Moses grow into a different adult, the binary opposite of Hi-Hatz. They are both looked up to and respected by their friends, the most prominent scenes where Moses and Hi-Hatz are juxtaposed is where they each leave the blooded elevator. As they each leave the elevator they have had and will continue in a different motives, Hi-Hatz leaves after killing multiple aliens and also letting them kill his friends and is planning on killing Moses, his friends and even more aliens. Whereas, Moses leaves the elevator after saving the block, blowing up his own flat, losing friends and wiping out the aliens and is planning on just taking his expected punishment from the police as he is usually punished for what he hasn’t done and no one believes him anyway, a completely different Moses to who we had seen at the beginning, when arrested for actually doing something wrong he still fought back but throughout the story has come of age into a mature adult.

Both Andrew and Moses have a turning point that makes the opinions of those around them change dramatically. Andrew’s change is gradual, leading up from him thinking of himself as an ‘apex predator’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQdZeOxzFdY) but is fully carried out when he gains so much popularity through winning the talent show and being friends with Steve and then is shortly all taken away from him after embarrassing himself carrying out amorous activities with a girl and vomiting on her, this crashes Andrew’s world and recently discovered social life as losing your virginity is a big part of coming of age and he has managed to ruin that too, he’s still not an adult. After losing everything he’s always wanted in such a short amount of time pushes Andrew over the edge, with his new found power and belief of himself being an apex predator and stronger than everyone else shows him taking an immature childish approach to his ultimate downfall previously foreshadowed by Matt “Your head is getting huge, this is the beginning of your downfall I’m telling you. Hubris.” where he is essentially throwing a very violent tantrum using his powers. This is a gradual process by killing smaller insects slowly (www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sP4wixKzzY), beating his father (www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OWwOfql2ZA), stealing (www.youtube.com/watch?v=DILLiYa8j74)and eventually destroying the city (www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m7z7HGZY9M); this turning point means Andrew is now the complete opposite to how he began, now being the villain instead of the victim. This now darker character is shown very cleverly, through the previously explained first person filming showing the story through Andrew’s handheld, after he steals from the thugs on his street Andrew is filmed through CCTV and other civilians camera phones, like he’s a caged animal. The lighting is dimmer, Andrew is almost always shadowed or is the only thing lit up in complete darkness, both the camera and lighting make it an unsettling feel and show’s Andrew’s coming of age had most definitely taken a turn for the worst.

The same process happens in Attack the Block, except Moses uses his power and takes it into responsibility. As Sam explains that the alien’s must be after him since he killed the queen of their species, Moses realises that he needs to end all that he has started and takes his power to save ‘the block’ and potentially the rest of the world. This takes Moses’ starting character as a troubled youth, a villain almost and makes him a hero. It also shows Moses going through his right of passage to becoming an adult at the young age of 15, as we find out from Sam in this scene. He has had to beg, borrow, steal, lie and cheat his way to survival and is now taking responsibility of his actions to save what he feels is family and more, especially seeing as he has already lost friends due to the damage he has created and becomes an adult.

Both Chronicle and Attack the block have extreme life changing ends. Chronicle leaves Matt having to take everything into his own hands, Andrew is destroying the city, killing people and trying to kill his own father and he becomes the main character taking the right of passage from being a teenager still, going to parties and school living a normal life to having to save the world just like Moses. Also like Moses, has to end the life that is destroying everything around them, he has to kill Andrew (a tragic ending, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6DJhD1K85k – 1.15) in order for everyone to live and although this may be misjudged as no one other than Andrew and himself know what is going on so he has to leave the city with a quick escape so that the police and authorities don’t try to kill him too or use to him for experiments. This therefore is a tragic ending either way, Andrew a young boy at first innocent is consumed by power through his lack of it his whole life, he never became an adult, although he had a tough life and seemed to be quite mature when given the chance to get his own back on the world he let his childish motivations and insecurities take control, ruining his own life and the others around him. Matt an innocent teenage boy in the right of passage to becoming an adult has had to kill his own cousin and flee due to his actions to save himself. All of this had happened through the perception of them both from society.

Attack the block has a heroic ending, after having killed all the aliens and saving the block, having had his criminal record and recent incident with Sam the police arrested Moses straight away. He and Pest are sitting in the back of the police van waiting to be taken to the station when they hear all of the block’s residents chanting Moses’ name after Sam told the police what had happened, being a respected nurse they believed her and the film ends on a close up shot of Moses’ face smiling for the first time in the whole film. He finally feels believed in and that his risking his life that night hadn’t been wasted, he feels like a hero and you can tell his life had changed for the better. This is all through the belief of him through adults and authoritive figures opinion of him. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMGW_gVNJgQ)

Through the perception of the boys in both Chronicle and Attack the block and the right of passage that both Matt and Moses have to endure makes them turn in to complete different characters than what we see at the beginning of the films. We see Andrew killed through the consumption of power and opinions of him from society and we see Moses’ life change dramatically also through the perception of him from society. Both face binary opposition and they have to overcome taking the home life difficulties they have had to endure their entire lives in different ways, Andrew facing a tragic ending of death, Moses’ restarting his life as an adult and Matt having to start a new life on his own due to his cousins actions and constantly being compared to him.