Metacritic-Rezensionen

If nowhere near as scary as the original Paranormal, the result is superior to many of the low-budget terror flicks that have arrived since (yes, The Devil Inside, we're talking about you) and benefits hugely from Dimitri Diatchenko's performance as moviedom's Worst. Tour. Guide. Ever.

The novelty of the setting ultimately proves highly effective. Shot mainly in Eastern European locations that effectively stand in for Prypiat, which is now actually a tourist site, the film is highly convincing in its verisimilitude.

Scattered stretches of suspense and a few undeniably potent shocks are not enough to dissipate the sense of deja vu that prevails throughout Chernobyl Diaries, a wearyingly predictable thriller about "extreme tourists."

Chernobyl Diaries is afflicted with a fatal flaw that damages many horror films: after a better-than-average setup and a promising first half, everything falls apart.

It's mostly boilerplate horror, plucking visual ideas from better sources and relying on the sick novelty of referencing an actual catastrophe.

In Chernobyl Diaries, directed by Bradley Parker, stupidity is taken to extremes.

The problem with Chernobyl Diaries isn't that it's offensive, it's that it's dumb.

Despite an unlikely setting and a moderately intriguing premise, Chernobyl Diaries proves to be a generic horror flick where young tourists are systematically victimized in unoriginal and not terribly scary ways.

If this horror movie cashes in on the audience that echoes its character's awareness ("That's where the nucular thing happened, right?") then we're about to learn how low our national academic standards are.

With the faux-verité aesthetics of [Rec], the American-tourists-in-Eastern-European-hell setup of Hostel, and the brain of a mushy radioactive mutant zombie thingie, Chernobyl Diaries is little more than decomposed horror leftovers.