Director: Bradley Parker
Starring: Olivia Dudley, Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sardowski, Devin Kelley, Dimitri Diatchenko, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Nathan Phillips
Running Time: 85 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: Alternate Ending, Deleted Scenes, Trailer, Uri’s Extreme Tours Promotional Video, Chernobyl’s Conspiracy Viral Video
If Hollywood chooses to take a human disaster – like Chernobyl – and use it as a setting, and spectacle for horror is it disrespectful? Bradley Parker’s directorial debut CHERNOBYL DIARIES asks this question and very little else during its 85 minute running time.
Three friends: Amanda (Kelley), Natalie (Dudley), and Natalie’s boyfriend Chris (McCartney) are travelling the world. Handheld camera footage shows us what a great time they are having until we land in Kiev meeting Chris’ brother Paul (Sadowski) who has a treat for them, a trip to Pripyat the nearest town to Chernobyl. Of course the tour is unauthorised but Uri (Diatchenko) is a nice guy, so they jump in his van and head off for a gay old time. Unleashed as they commence the tour is a barrage of horror cliches, under-developed characters, and a want for the film to end as quickly as possible.
CHERNOBYL DIARIES is a victim of a genre full of films with a dearth of originality. Effectively a ‘teenagers go to a cabin’ story in a different setting it struggles to maintain any interest and isn’t helped by the aforementioned character deficiencies – to say they lack depth is an understatement. THE DESCENT – released in 2005 – is an example of how to get these types of stories to work. Director/writer Neil Marshall gave that movie an emotional pull, and a strong central character-arc which kept audiences hooked, and jumping out of their skin. On CHERNOBYL DIARIES writer Oren Peli has failed to see the worth in developing relations; the one pull is Chris’ plans to propose to Natalie but this is soon forgotten thanks to the half-hearted way it is presented.
There are a lot of bad horror films out there, don’t be fooled into thinking CHERNOBYL DIARIES is anything like the worst. It may lack the two main components you need in a horror film: attachment, and scares, but it looks nice enough, and has been capably performed by the cast. However, the general feeling whilst watching CHERNOBYL DIARIES is that the locations, and the victims of the terrible incident that took place 26 years ago are disrespected. There will be families who have lost everything because of the events of 26th April 1986, and all the filmmakers can do is say ‘What if something survived, has been mutilated and is killing people?’ Perhaps, for the sake of those affected that is a question they should have left alone.
Extras: Alternate ending is actually more satisfying than the film itself, however the deleted scenes add nothing at all. Uri’s infomercial is ok, as is everything else included.
CHERNOBYL DIARIES is released on Blu-ray and DVD Monday 22nd October
Krystalis
Oct 13, 2012 at 5:38 pm
I had conflicting feelings on wanting to see this film. I love the horror genre and my husband is a bigger fanatic than I am. We watched the previews and decided it might be one we’d like to see. Reviews online have been mixed so I went ahead and added it to my Blockbuster @ Home movie queue. The movie should be here this afternoon and I’m interested how it really stacks up to other recent horror movies. I work for DISH so I’ve been using Blockbuster for a while now and it keeps me from having to hunt down movies at the kiosk. I was surprised to see that you say the alternate ending is better than the original because now I’m curious. That really doesn’t happen too often.