Review of Chernobyl Diaries (2012) by Writefilmlive21 — 01 Jan 2013

"Chernobyl Diaries" has a promising setup, but ultimately gives you nothing you haven't seen before in countless other horror films. When a group of American teenagers accepts an offer from a Russian extreme tourist guide to an abandoned town just outside Chernobyl, they quickly discover they're not alone and find themselves in a grim fight for survival .

. . only, really, there's less fighting in this movie than just vaguely incoherent running, chasing and split-second scary images. It honestly plays and feels like a found-footage movie, despite not actually being one, and although the acting is decent, it's only at its best in the first act, when it's relying on the atmosphere of the abandoned town itself to build suspense.

After that, you just get some dogs, a bunch of people you never see clearly, a series of moronic decisions to continue further and further into the high-radiation zones (they actually end up right outside the friggin' Chernobyl reactor), and a conclusion that is as unsurprising as it is unoriginal.

I'll give the film credit for its characters, as they are much more believable and likeable than most other horror flick teenagers, but they're only slightly less idiotic in their decisions and, of course, all die (the last one counts, I say).

The result? A rather messy and underdeveloped film that wastes an engaging context on cliches, tropes and a thorough lack of authentic tension or excitement.