Left Behind

LEFT BEHIND AKA AFTER CHERNOBYL AKA GHOSTS OF CHERNOBYL is a supernatural found footage horror film about a group of young people who inadvertently end up in the Chernobyl area and get terrorized by a supernatural entity. This story is bookended by that of an urban explorer who found the footage of this group and presents it to us.

I had just watched the thematically very similar THE CHERNOBYL DIARIES, and while that movie was a massive disappointment, compared to this, it is a veritable masterwork.

There are problems here on so many levels:

1. Character exposition: the movie does not properly explain how all the members of the group are related to each other. Also, there seems to be a point of conflict regarding the uncle of one of them that is never clarified.

2. Dialogue: it appears the directors went for the improvisation approach. As a result we get the expected banal, aimless dialogue to which is added a ton of shouting and yelling and pointless verbal sparring. It also rendered all group members thoroughly unlikable.

3. Acting: Generally not good, but then all that shouting turned these characters into one-notes, and therefore I could not tell whether the limited range was a problem with mainly with the acting or the dialogue.

I did notice that the actor who played "Tom" was head and shoulders above everyone else. I was then surprised to find out that he was Russian and that he had passed away 2 years before the release of the movie.

4. Story: Okay, so this is Chernobyl with a supernatural twist. It could have worked, but there was still so much unexplained, especially with all the ghosts other than the girl. And why was there a ghost train?? Why on earth did the urbex guy decide to go back after he had just watched the footage? How did the old footage from a generation before get mixed in with this footage?

5. Cinematography: this is the best aspect of this film, but still problematic. The film-makers decided to give fairly long preview flashes every once in a while. Thus, we see the antagonist early on, before the horror even begins, and the chance for a creepy buildup until the reveal is thrown away.

What a pity that neither this nor DIARIES managed to take advantage of the fantastic setting. Maybe the third time will be the charm.

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".

The movie had some positives: I like the setting (ie the abandoned Chernobyl city), a few of the scenes are creepy, and the movie is shot in a grainy manner that works well.

The biggest problem, by far, is that characters are not likable. On the contrary, the characters get so annoying because they just keep arguing and bickering with each non stop. By the time I reached the 40-minute mark, I was ready to turn this movie off because the characters were getting under my skin.

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.