Left Behind

This movie is a worse disaster than the actual Chernobyl Meltdown itself!!! Where should I begin, well the fact that these nitwits are in Russia and somehow stumble into Ukraine and manage to then unwittingly stumble into the EXCLUSION ZONE which seems to be almost totally unguarded!!! Then the whole nonsense of having both radiated survivors AND the ghosts of dead radiation victims come after them!?!?!? Give me a frigging break!

The writing is totally amateurish with unbelievable lines delivered by some of the worst actors to ever appear in a movie!!! The plotline seems to portray these idiots as too stupid to put two and two together and realize that an abandoned CITY in Ukraine is the site of the Chernobyl Meltdown Site.....Duh!!!

As a "Chernobophile" I rated this garbage 2 stars instead of 1 because they actually filmed in Pripyat, which is always fascinating to see, although I should have watched with the sound off. It boggles the mind how little sense this film makes. After 90 minutes I still didn't quite understand who the characters were or what they were doing together, but that's ok because I didn't care about a single one anyway. Zeno dialogue reflected what actual humans would say in any given situation. The characters seem to exist in an bizarro world in which hiding involves screaming and swearing at each other and the way of escaping a dangerous place is to keep entering the sketchiest of nooks and death traps rather than following a road or attempting to cover ground during daylight. The spooky imagery of Chernobyl (the only worthwhile aspect of the film) is nothing that can't be viewed by executing a simple Google search.

At first glance, Ghosts of Chernobyl (aka After Chernobyl) seems like just another run of the mill found footage movie. But then the end credits roll and they had some behind the scenes footage playing - and low and behold, they actually had a crew on this!

Believe it or not, there was what looked to be 5 crew members plus the cast actually on-site in Pripyat during the day and night to film, which is impressive seeing as there are obviously some heavy restrictions on the Exclusion Zone. They had a full makeup for the ghost and even a steadicam operator.

So how did we get this bland rehash of a movie?

First off, one has to be slightly lenient towards the fact a non-English crew shot an English language film, but that can only go so far. The plot is absurd (no one can accidentally wander into Chernobyl without hiking 10+ miles). We have direct lifts from other FF movies, an annoying cast, and bad CGI.

The scenes filmed at the groups van are so blurry and low rez they look to be filmed on an iPhone 4. However, once the group arrives to the abandoned city, things pick up a bit. Hounded by a mysterious bloody ghost, the group tries to figure out who she is and where they are at.

Seriously, none of them know what Chernobyl is. Sadly though, such a vapid group of young people honestly might not, but when the audience already knows where they are at, it gets annoying really fast hearing them constantly go "why was this town abandoned?".

Which leads to the biggest issue. They filmed in Chernobyl, yet apart from a handful of shots, it could have been filmed in any blown out abandoned building. The nighttime scenes are wasted with such a low light you don't see any scope, and the day scenes are largely shot in generic abandoned spots. I would half suspect they only were allowed one day and night to film at the actual location with the rushed feel of the shots and editing, but then again, the bts footage shows otherwise.

There is a decent concept behind this, but as yet no one has been able to deliver something worthwhile, as Chernobyl Diaries is just as bad as this.

There are a lot of ways in which this movie fails, but I want to point out this one in particular. Conflict between characters can be interesting when there are interesting points of view behind the conflict. This film, on the other hand, doesn't understand the use of conflict: the characters all just hate each other and bicker constantly. The movie tries to tell us these are friends and romantic partners, but what it shows us is a group of people that hate each other's guts, and not in an interesting way. Their bickering never advances the plot; it's usually just about whether they'll keep walking or stop for the night, and there's no difference between these options that we, as audience members, should care about.

Without a particularly interesting premise or compelling characters, this flaw sinks the movie from "nothing of interest" to "actually grating".

This is bad. Terrible acting, stupid premise... there is no way people can "accidentally wander" anywhere near the exclusion zone. "Kate" is so bloody annoying I was hoping something would happen to her, but I couldn't sit through the crapfest long enough to find out.