Boilerplate Horror

In many ways, Chernobyl Diaries is just your typical horror movie: a group of young adults ending up somewhere they shouldnt be, and getting picked one by one by a mysterious threat. But the film has the added bonus of taking advantage of a real-life tragedy to serve as a basis for the horror. It feels a little icky, but the problem goes beyond that particular bit of exploitation. Aside from some interesting camerawork, the film feels completely rote, with its personality-deficient characters running into generic horror situations.

Chris (Jesse McCartney) is visiting his brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) in Kiev. Paul convinces Chris, Chris girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Dudley), and her best friend Amanda (Devin Kelley) to take an extreme adventure tour through Pripyat, an abandoned worker town just outside of Chernobyl. Along with a couple of other tourists, the gang gets into a van with extreme tour guide Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) and head into the town. They spend a couple of hours there and resolve to head home, except something appears to have eaten through the wiring of the van. The group is forced to spend the night in Pripyat, and soon enough, they discover that the town isnt as abandoned as it seems.

The film basically goes through the motions of the generic horror movie. This in itself is not a terrible thing: there have been decades of horror films adhering to formula and still coming off as something more than generic. The difference usually lies in the characters. What makes Chernobyl Diaries ultimately fail is that it hardly spends any time exploring its characters. The most we get is that Paul is more impulsive than his brother Chris. Otherwise, everyone is pretty much interchangeable. It would be difficult to single out a personality trait that would define any of the films female characters.

And so the film goes on. Characters die one by one, and its difficult to care since we dont really know any of them. Even if we did care, however, the horror would still be pretty weak. The film doesnt define its threat very well. The film seems to be leaning on the Chernobyl connection to give them a shade of intrigue, but really they just come off as generic monsters. The film gains some points for its camerawork, which takes its cue from somewhere in between found footage and regular cinematography. It doesnt always find the best angle for the action, but it can feel a little more intimate at times.

The acting doesnt leave much of an impression, since these characters are so generic. Nobody really gets to do much more than run scared. There are bits, however, where the actors overplay it. Jonathan Sadowski has a tendency to oversell the bravado of his character, which makes him just feel annoying. The most interesting performance is from Dmitri Diatchenko, who plays the tour guide Uri. He at least delivers a shade of character history through his performance. The rest of cast may as well go nameless.

Aside from how it exploits real-life human tragedy, Chernobyl Diaries is completely forgettable. It is put together well enough, but none of the parts are actually interesting. The film seems to go out of its way to make sure that the characters are as generic as possible, and it largely squanders its unique setting. People looking for a horror fix can do so much better. Neil Marshalls The Descent, for example, features more complex relationships between its characters. The movie also seems to draw directly from the far superior The Hills Have Eyes. Whatever youre really looking for, it probably isnt here.

My Rating:

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Boilerplate Horror