Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

It just goes to show that a lower budget does not necessarily result in an excellent film, particularly of this genre. The scares were non-existent, consistent shaky cam and one-dimensional characters. I expected nothing more to be honest. A group of tourists have been travelling around Europe, during their stop at Kiev they come across an extreme-tour to Pripyat. Yet, the desolate ghost town may not actually be so abandoned after all. Everyone and their pet dog knows about the Chernobyl disaster, which is why it makes such an interesting location for a horror. Early one morning an entire town had to evacuate immediately before succumbing to the leaking nuclear radiation. The problem with this film is, in my opinion, it's insensitive. This was a horrible accident to which innocent lives were lost, to then exploit that with such mediocrity felt wrong. Personal views aside, this film was boring, predictable and tame. The setting of Pripyat and Chernobyl did create a chilling atmosphere, and the first fifteen minutes genuinely had good character development. Then when our characters arrive, they just become expendable. The "scares" are simply loud noises, literally. There's a scene where an irradiated bear suddenly charges through a hallway...midway up an apartment complex. Oren Peli lost me at that point. Then Brad Parker's directing style, whilst bold with various long takes, lacks confidence and slowly succumbs to shaky cam. A horrendous scene that perfectly illustrates this is when the van is mysteriously attacked. Filmed through the perspective of a phone, the camera is tossed around like a rag doll. I physically could not see anything! How is that scary!? Heck if I wanted to be scared of the unknown, I would've taken a stroll at midnight without a torch instead of watching this. The ending was rushed, I'm talking "concluded" within thirty seconds. It also ends on a jump scare...yep, pretty much sums this up. Chernobyl Diaries? Hardly a diary, more like a note. A post-it note. Chernobyl Post-It Notes.

This movie was not as bad as I expected it to be, but it wasn't really that good either. The plot is really short and boring, and the ending was very disappointing. I have seen many documentaries on Chernobyl and the movie kind of threw all logic out the window. One would of expected at least one character to have common sense when running around a place full of radiation. The plot was rushed a lot in many scenes and the ending really pissed me off. The script was not bad, but it could have been improved. The actors and actresses were really good as majority of them have been in successful movies and TV shows, but you could see that their real acting talents were not expressed enough due to the scenes being rushed a lot as I said before. However, the movie was not all bad. The special effects were impressive and the fact that the movie was shot in the actual town of Chernobyl is really cool. Overall the movie is not terrible, but it's not that great either. If you could find a way to watch it for free or cheap then watch it, but I personally would not spend money to watch it.

So, I just wanted some exciting horror for the night. My expectations were definitely not high, since horror movies often are just stupid. They are good though if they succeed in entertaining me at some level.This movie here, as you might see from the low score I gave it, wasn't very entertaining. Chernobyl Diaries started off with some basic young adult's vacation stuff, having fun and all, yeah. In comes Uri who takes a group of friends and other travelers to Pripjat to take a look at the ghost town. Unsurprisingly their car won't start when they are about to leave the place after the tour. From there on, everything goes wrong and the group starts to gain casualties as the hostile residents of the so called ghost town attack them...They got angry dogs and random radioactively contaminated angry people who seem to be unable to communicate in any human level but are just about enough smart to get the group members one at a time. For some reason they just kill them, I guess they want to eat them or something. I don't understand why they even would keep lurking in the shadows since they have an overwhelming superiority of people. It's just so stupid. Why would there even be people left in Pripjat? On rare occasion movies just get worse all the time. Chernobyl Diaries is a great example of that kind of movie. It feels like every scene just sinks the movie deeper into stupidity, irrationality and clichés. It's not even entertaining: no humor can be found and I couldn't even laugh at any funny looking monsters since they barely even showed them. These mutant people were just a gray mass of meat with faces like the Slipknot singer Corey Taylor's current mask. As a summary, let's say that in this movie you can find a bunch of clichés, boring characters (close to the end I just hoped they all would die soon), boring monsters, cheap special effects and one amusing jump scare (the bear). The setting was a good chance gone to waste. This movie could easily have been much better if someone had told the writers about a little thing called imagination. In this movie there is pretty much nothing original or interesting whatsoever.2/10

I have seen this movie like a thousand times and I still never get sick of it. It is by far my favourite movie. It's not like the other typical horror movies with the annoying background music when there's suspense. This movie is nice and realistic, no over the top background horror music, the camera movements are awesome. The actors are amazing and not too well known but I love everything about it. I didn't really know about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster but after watching this movie I was so interested I decided to search up the actual thing. I'm still trying to find a movie similar to Chernobyl Diaires it's so hard but I don't think I'll be over this movie anytime soon. Love It. Be awesome if they made a part 2 or something rather.