Review of Chernobyl Diaries (2012) by Willie C — 03 Jan 2013

Offers up a few good scares but is overall lacking in depth and originality.

Premise: Six tourists along with their guide decide to go the abandoned city of Pripyat, the sight of the famous Chernobyl disaster. Despite the fact that it is heavily guarded, the group heads deeper into the.

Directed by Bradley Parker and written by Oren Peli, Shane, and Carey Van Dyke, the latter two being the grandsons of Dick Van Dyke and working for the mockbuster and generally the all-around terrible production company The Asylum. If you know this before you watching the movie, you'll expect terrible writing and poor production value. And that's exactly what you'll get. First of all, no this isn't a found footage movie as the title might suggest, although you wouldn't know it by looking at it. The camera work is poorly done as most of the time the camera guy is walking beside the characters. A dolly track or steady cam would have been greatly beneficial. The writing is awful. The characters are very shallow and pretty moronic. I didn't care about any of them. They commit just about every bad decision that has gotten people killed in horror movies. "Oh, let's go down that dark hallway without any sort of light. Something won't surely be waiting there to grab us." It was actually sometimes a relief to see them get dragged off screen and killed when their time came. The dialogue is filled with constant expletives. To me this is a sign that the writers couldn't properly convey the characters' emotions. As for the acting, as you might have already guessed, isn't that good. I hated Jesse McCartney from the moment he appeared on screen. He's flat out annoying in the movie, but I will say this; about half way through in a certain scene is where he shines. For that one part I forgot I hated his character. The other actors just spit out their lines with unconvincing emotion No this isn't a found footage movie as the title might suggest, although you wouldn't know it by looking at it. The camera work is poorly done as most of the time the camera guy is walking beside the characters. A dolly track or steady cam would have been greatly beneficial. The atmosphere is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that it'll probably have you on the edge of your seat waiting for a jump scene as many of the scenes take place in very dark corridors or at night. The bad thing is that these jump scenes rarely ever come. There were many opportunities the filmmakers missed where there could have been some truly frightening moments. That being said, this movie isn't a total failure as there are a few great jump scenes buried beneath the agonizingly clichéd writing and acting. These few are what make the movie into what is not a complete waste of time. These parts you won't see coming...well I didn't see it coming but you might. All in all the movie ends up how you'd expect it to be: not good but not all that terrible either. This is probably because it's so bad it's good. Total Score: 4/10.