Official Synopsis
A group of six young vacationers who, looking to go off the beaten path, hire an “extreme” tour guide. Ignoring warnings, he takes them into the city of Pripyat, the former home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, but a deserted town since the disaster more than 25 years ago.
After a brief exploration of the abandoned city, however, the group soon finds themselves stranded, only to discover that they are not alone…
{hwdvs-player}id=2789|tpl=playeronly{/hwdvs-player}
How could you not like this setup? When the Chernobyl disaster occurred it was one of the more terrifying and saddest events in Russian history. Seeing a town completely emptied and people sacrificing their lives to make sure the radiation was kept in check was indescribable. Picture the disaster that happened recently in Japan except ten times worse.
The entire premise of the film surrounds the possibility that not everyone made it out alive, but they aren’t quite dead. To be quite honest, the scariest parts of the film is the entire aurora of the abandoned town. Bradley Parker and Oren Peli paint a wonderfully bleak picture for the story using the set of dead towns/buildings. When you see everything for the first time as the group of ‘extreme tourist’, led by Jonathan Sadowski as Paul, pull up to the town, you can pretty much understand the creepiness to it all.
As the movie progresses, and things begin to go wrong, you understand that stuff is about to go down for this small group. Even when the first attack occurs you begin to feel that ‘horror anxiety’ that comes along with these types of films.
But then… it all gets a bit boring.
Once you establish that there are ‘monsters’ of some sort picking off the group, you begin to wonder where these things are and what are they doing during the day. You also get a very long stint where the characters are foolishly trying to find their friends (even though they have found one badly injured, and another mutilated). The movie begins to feel like it’s trying to hard for scares and honestly begins to fall flat. Slowly, Peli’s script becomes a bit dry towards the middle and barren towards the end. He seems to not know what the heck he wants to do with this setup and it shows by endless amounts of non-scary killings. By the end, the reveal isn’t that major because you’ll simply stop looking for reasoning.
It’s a shame about the film because this setup was simply epic. You could go any direction, establishing how truly isolated the kids are in this very abandoned place. I don’t want to give away the ‘monsters’ in this one, so I won’t gripe much about them. They did need a bit more scare in them, though.
In the end, I don’t think Chernobyl Diaries will go down as one of the better horror movies in recent history (Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity is far better), as it certainly missed a chance at doing something truly epic with the location it established.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film, it’s actually quite solid. Even though they’re going for that raw, shaky look of the footage, it turns out quite well when transferred to HD. It’s not the best looking HD I’ve seen, as you’ll find just a tad bit of compression issues in the darker scenes, but it does a good job for realism. The audio is also good, as you get it in 5.1 DTS-HD.
Finally, as for the special features, here’s what you’re looking at:
– Uri’s Extreme Tours Infomercial
– Chernobyl Conspiracy Viral Video
– Additional Scene
– Alternate Ending
I found the tours infomercial actually amusing. A good special feature for this release. The viral video was actually quite creepier than the movie, which makes it a good setup for the film. The alternate ending left much to be desired. I felt like the original ending did a better job with wrapping up things. I’m glad they didn’t use the alternate.
Chernobyl Diaries available on Blu-ray Combo pack, DVD and for download 10/16!
