Movie Review: Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

-
Another film that was instantly appealing to me was The Chernobyl Diaries. The same shopping spree that saw me buying The Loved Ones also saw me purchasing this! I had been meaning to watch it for quite some time and when I saw a solitary copy of it at cut price of about £5 (Thank you HMV 70% off!) I could not resist!

Chernobyl Diaries follows a group of friends travelling around Europe. Chris, along with his girlfriend Natalie and another friend Amanda document their trip with footage from loads of major cities around Europe. The next stop on their trip is to the Ukraine to meet up with Chris’ brother Paul. From Kiev, they plan to travel to Moscow however, a chance opportunity to visit the site of the infamous Chernobyl nuclear reactor proves too good to pass up! They meet up with extreme tour guide Uri and along with another couple there for the trip, they set off to the town of Pripyat.

The actual reactor site is still too dangerous for humans so the group make do with the town that was populated by the workers and their families. The town of Pripyat was evacuated with little warning when Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor No. 4 went critical and exploded. With the exception of a few opportunistic thieves, the town is heavily guarded and remains relatively untouched. After arriving at a military checkpoint, they are told to turn around. Uri, refusing this advice finds another route into the town through the woods.

Once in Pripyat, the group are shown around by Uri who despite being slightly cautious, appears to know his way around. They take their chance to snap some very cool pics and have a good old nosey around at some of the amenities and homes that were abandoned. As day draws to a close Uri urges the group back to the van but it refuses to start. After a small bit of investigation, they find the starter motor and the cables to said motor appear to have been chewed by something! They sit less than calmly in the lifeless van until night falls around them. Then the fun really begins!

With Producer and screenplay writer Oren Peli involved, we know what kind of film we’re going to get but the actual result is so much more than I had expected. It will inevitably be likened to the docu-styled paranormal activity purely because of its style but it is far superior. In fact, for reasons quite unknown to me, the more I think about it the more I enjoyed this film. The fact we are only given mouth watering snippets of the dangers, always slightly visible but just out of reach if you know what I mean. 

While Chernobyl Diaries wasn’t actually filmed on location for obviously reasons, I thought the scenes were very convincing. The minor details really help the atmosphere and overall believability of the movie. I know the reality of the situation is very different and people regularly visit the town of Pripyat on “official” tourist visits but if that was internationally common knowledge then perhaps the film wouldn’t have been made or maybe it would have, just set in an earlier time.

A very interesting read on Sci-Fi Movie Hype takes us through some of the flaws within the film BUT what I am reviewing is the movie itself, so enjoy the read at your will but please do not let any of it take away from what is an original and fantastic horror film. Sometimes people let little things like this influence their minds too much. Example, Jurassic Park appears plausible and reachable in the film but then a Scientist tells you its IMPOSSIBLE! Does that make you enjoy the film any less? Just because tourists go to Pripyat all the time and Mobile Phones DO work, does that make this film any less enjoyable? Short answer... No!

Chernobyl Diaries is brilliantly acted with a screenplay to match. Some great filming tricks make the whole thing feel ironically claustrophobic and a few jumpy bits really add to the atmosphere. At no point throughout this film did I find myself anything other than engrossed so despite everything we now know, it is still a brilliant film. In fact, I think I will watch it again tonight!

Released: 2012
Chernobyl Diaries (2012) on IMDb
My Rating: 8

Popular posts from this blog

Movie Review: Outpost: Black Sun (2012)

-
Image
This is a film that like the previous sequel I reviewed ( Grave Encounters 2 ) promised so much. Let me take you back a bit. One of my first posts on this website was for a little indie film called Outpost . The film saw a group of mercenaries escorting a businessman in the woods of Eastern Europe only to be confronted by an army of un-dead Nazi SS soldiers. The concept and delivery were brilliant and immediately after watching Outpost, I was ecstatic to learn that a sequel had already been commissioned. A few years passed and it seemed as though Outpost 2 was never going to be released, I had been following their Facebook/Twitter pages so I knew the film had been made but alas, no release date. Even news of a third instalment didn’t bring with it a release for the second! Eventually, as if overnight, Outpost: Black Sun was released in shops and quickly moved to the top of my wish list! I finally got the opportunity to watch it after a chance visit to HMV provided me with a copy for...
More »

Movie Review: Outpost (2007)

-
Image
 No one told them the war was over!  It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a budget accumulated from re-mortgaging your house. Outpost uses war as the undertone but puts an all important spin on it. Maybe not as much as a horror film as it is a sci-fi thriller but when you have an army of undead Nazi's surrounding your location it could be quite horrific. For anyone who has seen Deathwatch, this one is for you. Where that film took a World War setting and added the horror twist; rather well I might add, Outpost does a very similar thing. Set in war torn Eastern Europe, a group of mercenaries are employed to protect a mysterious businessman but what they find is an old WW2 bunker. Strange things start happening and the group then find themselves in a struggle for survival. Some recognisable faces make the whole thing seem very local, mostly British actors, including Ray Stevenson, who recently played the muscle to Gary Oldman in The Book of Eli and Michael Smi...
More »

Horror! Part 4: Supernatural

-
Image
Supernatural, paranormal whatever you want to call it, this sub-genre of horror films is next on the list in my "Horror!" segments. Following on from Zombies , Monsters and Slashers , Supernatural will take us places we haven’t really ventured to yet.  Typically, you think of ghosts when you start to envision supernatural and as usual, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Where other genre’s of horror rely heavily on physical aspects, (blood, guts, gore and creatures) supernatural films play more with your mind. Often leaving the core aspects of the film to the viewers’ imagination or deep seated fear’s and repressed tension.  Now for the housekeeping, I will lay out the rules, give a brief outline of the genre and my own opinions and then at the end, I will probably include my 10 best films from the sub-genre. For the purposes of this piece, supernatural will cover ghosts, paranormal and the occult. Although Zombies, Vampires, werewolves etc all come under the vague heading...
More »