Review of Chernobyl Diaries

A film with a very good concept, but it doesn't quite deliver. 'Chernobyl Diaries' is a 2012 American horror film starring Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sadowski, Devin Kelley, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Nathan Philips, Ingrid Bolso Berdal and Dimitri Diatchenko. It was co-produced and directed by Bradley Parker and uses the real-life 1986 Chernobyl disaster for its story. The story revolves around a group of friends who are visited the character of Chris' (McCartney) brother Paul (Sadowski) in Kyiv before heading to Moscow. Paul convinces the group to go on an "extreme tour" to the abandoned town of Prypiat, which was abandoned over night after the disaster. Whilst on their "extreme tour" strange circumstances occur which end up with them being trapped alone in the abandoned town, but are they really alone? Warning, this review contains miner spoilers.

This film started off really well, it introduced the cast well, explained the history of Chernobyl and succeeded in created a very creepy atmosphere, which is perfect for a horror. The fact that the story is tied in with real events is something that I always like because it gives the film a sense of realism (although that quickly disappears in any horror) and originality.  So like I said, it starts well, the abandoned town of Prypiat is perfect for this genre, but as the film goes on, any chance of this film being good goes down the drain. The film keeps building and building up to scary moments, but they all end up being exactly the same. It's like, tension, tension, tension, boom! We see a creature. Tension, tension, tension boom! Two creatures! It goes on like that. It turns into every other horror film out there. Plus by the time anything interesting really happens, the film seems to have to turn into a zombie movie, with the characters being chased through Chernobyl.

As for the ending, oh my god I was annoyed! It was so cliche! It gets interesting for a bit, then somewhere new, and you can just tell by what they're saying that you know exactly what is going to happen, just like in every horror film out there there is no originality. The location of the film is as far as the originality goes with this film. At least the score was good. Some of the camera work wasn't too good, was very shaky, and half the time it's too dark to see anything, which is understandable considering they're in a place at night with no lights, but it goes from really dark, to suddenly we can see everything, even when they're in buildings with no windows. I guess we can forgive them for that, we'd all be pretty annoyed if we went and saw a film but couldn't see half of it.

So in conclusion, it was a good idea, but it failed to follow through. The actors was alright, I have to say that if you do decide to see this movie, you'll witness one of the worst reactions to a death ever, it's so random and ridiculous! The main problem with this film was that it was great at building up tension, I could feel myself getting scared, really scared at some parts, but then the end result was always disappointing, it was always the same. The film is just too predictable. I am going to give 'Chernobyl Diaries' a 3.5/10, purely because it had a good opportunity and it completely wasted it.