Chernobyl Diaries

This COULD have been a great film. The idea behind it and the setting builds tension and the first half of the film isn't bad. The second half lets it down. Poor cinematography means half the time you have no clue whats going on. Many of the shots are just to dark to be able to see around the characters leading to confusion as to what exactly is going on. The ending is also half done. It was like the writers just shoved it in there as an extra with no thought.

Its sad because its well acted and has some good startle scares unfortunately most of these are in the trailer.

Wait for the DVD,

Chernobyl Diaries a hollow shell of a movie: It has a good premise and the perfect backdrop for a horror flick, but with absolutely no substance. That's the best way I can describe it. The vacant radiation-laden Chernobyl is a wonderfully creepy place for a horror movie to take place. It sets up with a group of friends touring Europe and one of them has the bright idea to go on an "extreme tour" so they make a quick pit stop at Chernobyl. They see an abandoned ferris wheel, they explore the empty buildings, they see the remains of dead animals - it sets up an effectively creepy atmosphere. One of the girls takes a picture and something odd can be seen in a window. Weird, right? Well apparently not weird enough for her to say anything. After they snap a few pictures with the beautifully bleak backdrop of dead trees and industrial smoke stacks, they go back to the tour van. Then the entire bottom of the movie drops.

From there it's cliché city. Cars not starting, people going places they shouldn't, people splitting up when they shouldn't be - everything gets so dumb so quickly it's unreal. You stop caring about the characters after a while because they're making stupid decisions so there's no one to root for. The only character with any personality was the tour guide and he is hardly used, so we're left with six unlikable people struggling to find their way out of the city while getting picked off one by one. It simply isn't interesting. There are no scares and there is little to no suspense. It's just "shhh I hear something..." and then "oh no, something's around the corner" and then they get attacked and it's like 'well yeah, of course that's going to happen'. It's too predictable for it to be scary, and it's too disjointed to make it unsettling. It's just watching and waiting for these characters to die so the movie can end.

The disjointedness mainly comes from the directing. The first shot leads you to believe it's a found-footage movie, but it isn't. It is just shot that way - shaky cam, quick movements, no clear view of anything really. It just makes no sense because we know someone's holding the camera and it acts as a person, but the group of people are oblivious to it so it's like an invisible, mute character that allows us to see through its point-of-view. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to film it that way because it gets noticeably worse as the movie goes on: The more stressed the characters are, the worst the camera work gets. It's incredibly annoying.

Which leads me to believe the only thing the writers had for Chernobyl Diaries was its premise - a group of kids stranded in Chernobyl. Then they were like "well, now that they're stranded in this creepy, radioactive, vacant city... let's just have them run around and get killed off one by one until the end." It's just lazy writing. The entire third act feels rushed, not to mention the horribly anti-climactic ending. Chernobyl Diaries is a flop; uninspired, boring, and worst of all, completely unscary.

Saying a movie is predictable is like saying a movie has a beginning, middle and end. Most movies, no matter the genre are predictable these days. Very few are super unique. I DO NOT think Chernobyl Diaries is predictable. With that being said; I enjoyed the movie a lot, I jumped, I wasn't bored at all! At one point I actually had to sit at the edge of the couch. Sometimes it felt like I was there with them. I feel that the director definitely executed the idea that the writers seen in their mind. I'm disappointed that the average rating is 5.0 because MANY people come to IMDb to check a rating before they watch a movie and the 5.0 will most likely deter them and they will miss out. I strongly recommend it to people that want to sit back and have a good scare.

This movie honestly isn't as bad as everyone's rating it. Sure, it had some predictable scenes and bad acting, but this isn't supposed to be a serious movie. If you going to see it with the mindset of it being deep and intellectual, you are more than likely not going to enjoy it. It uses tension to scare you more than anything else. Not very much gore and violence. It's worth seeing, despite everyone's reviews. I didn't know what was going to happen next for the majority of the movie. If you have to choose between this and "Cabin In The Woods" you should definitely see cabin. This, however, is worth seeing as well. I hope people who go to see this won't be expecting a intriguing movie with a deep story, and just go for the sheer excitement of the film.

Chernobyl diaries documents the travels of four American tourists including Chris (played by Jessee McCartney) who stop in Kyiv to visit Chris's brother Paul before recommencing their travels across Europe. After a night out, they propose to explore the abandoned town of Prypiat, the home of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that previously hosted an infamous disaster. Of course, the horrors that surrounded the Plant have't quite dissipated and therefore something conspicuously sinister awaits these tourists.

Whilst the film doesn't offer anything particularly new to the horror genre, it does offer some genuinely horrifying moments which will serve to sustain the audiences' attention throughout. Though the characters aren't particularly interesting, they do form a likable group throughout the duration of the film and really authenticate the moments of horror. At times, the film verges on resembling a slasher - let's just see what's around the corner - kind of moments which prevent the film from constructing its own narrative based on this unique situation.

Stylistically the film is interesting as it utilises the shaky camera aesthetic in the first half and then seems to divulge into a more traditional way of filming. It's almost as if director Bradley Parker is creating two films concurrently; a shaky-cam experience of Americans stranded in Europe and a film about a group who are terrorised by zombie-like creatures. Producer Oren Peli has definitely made his presence aware, with the film's Paranormal Activity style "gotcha" moments which are often scary but also predictable and unimaginative.

The film could have focused on the origins of the Chernobyl disaster in some detail to provide a context for these creatures, though their behaviour would still have remained an enigma even with this explanation in place. Are they hungry for human flesh or are they merely crazy? These questions are also evoked in the Wrong Turn films which this film is indebted with its depiction of mutants as the result of a radiation catastrophe. Are the mutants the real victims here?

As well as paying homage to Wrong Turn, the film has a very Hostel-like feel with its commentary on Eastern Europe as a space of corruption and danger. The overall creepy, inauspicious atmosphere constructed in the film really lends credence to the horror depicted which compensates for what lacks in terms of the film's antagonists, whatever they are.

If anything is to be learnt from this film, stay the other side of the pond.