Chernobyl Diaries(spoilers)
Lets start at the very tipidy top of this shit fest. Produced by Oren Peli, he's the dude who directed and produced the paranormal activity movies. This however was directed by Brad Parker, he's never directed a movie before...it shows. The issue is unlike those movies that have their niche this diaries does not. It stands in a middle ground, not quite a handy cam movie and not quite a real movie. To their credit they found a nice isolated area in Russia (I assume) to film thats however the only real good thing about this piece of garbage. Well that's not true the first 45 minutes or so feature a pretty funny and rather well acted character named Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) this guy has more credit than anyone in this movie. Check him out hes been in tons of video games. Oh and Jessie McCarthy is in this, for like 20 minutes.
Anyway the movie starts off very cliche. A group of Americans go to visit Chris's(McCarthy) brother in Kiev, while there Chris's brother tells them of this extreme tourism and that his friend Uri can take them close to Chernobyl. Chris objects but eventually is overruled by his dumb girlfriend and her even dumber friend. So, the next morning their adventure begins when they go to Uri's office and meet up with two other (back packers) I put that in parenthesis only because the only indication they are back packers were literally the back packs on their backs, nothing more. Next thing you know they have boarded Uri's van and off they go to certain doom, er I mean a great vacation. The first thing they encounter is military patrol's telling them that maintenance is being done and that no one may enter. Naturally Uri knows another way in. Not to break your concentration but if you were lets say going to a highly radioactive area and you were told to stay out would you go in anyway? Yeah I didn't think so, but just like everything else in this waste of $11.50 there is no logic.
Where was I...ah yes the first thing they encounter is the most obvious, a radioactive fish. That's right straight out of Mr. Burns run off this fish is nasty on all levels, even the CGI of the fish was shit! Finally after about 40 min the group is now touring the hollow hauls of the much stressed abandoned housing(overstressed it felt like every five seconds we reminded how quickly it was abandoned) where people had to leave in five minutes time leaving all their treasure behind. Wait! whats that!? What is that noise!? Is it a zombie!? A mutated half man half donkey!? Nope its a fucking bear, on the fourth floor no less. Maintenance is being done indeed! The Plot thickens! So by this time Uri checks his nifty radiation detector and deems they should go the sun is going down. Whats this? someone has cut the wires to your van? 20 kilometers from civilization you say? So there they sit in the van till night fall when they hear noises. Uri being the bad ass he is goes off with his pistol to check it out, Chris goes with. Shots are fire and then nothing, Chris's brother goes finds Chris and brings him back with a badly torn leg. At this point the movie gets worse, there is no Uri and no scares therefore no fun.
Day approaches and half the group decides to look for Uri and finds well whats left of him. They also find his gun and radiation detector. Now this is where if this were a game it could work because much like in Metro 2033 radiation can be a compelling idea for a lot of things. This is the hot zone, within the hot zone creatures get scarier and your skin starts to boil. which to be fair I do believe they tried to convey this idea in the movie but it just wasn't filmed properly. The sun starts to set and they have found cables to the van so now they head back. When they get there the van is overturned and destroyed with no sign of Chris or his girlfriend. There is his cell phone and a blood trail, (whats this the phone happened to be recording? even after it was on all night and day with no extra charge? must not of been using his 4G) they watch the video of what happened ( lame) and follow the blood. This is when we finally see (well not really) one of the whatever the fuck they are. The only issue is its always so shaky and blurry when you see them you never get a clear view, you really cant tell what you're looking at until the very end of the movie and by that time if you haven't cut your wrists or left the movie you just feel really let down.
The movie never full gets off the ground, there is lots of running and not much else. Even shitty pop out movies get people to jump (watch the cabinet scene in paranormal activity 2) Diaries had none of that, I didn't like or care about the characters,( except Uri) The second half of the movie is set in dark tunnels until finally they get out to open fresh air. Oh wait no you don't you are directly beneath the reactor that exploded! oh no! Face to face with a Russian clean up crew. We are treated to a brief scene where the final person surviving is wheeled to a room to meet her doom. There is a really shitty brief explanation that these things were patients at a mental hospital that escaped into the reactor making them mutated and demented. This movie was awful Ive intentionally given details that would ruin it for people. Don't waste your money, if you really want to see it wait till it hits red box. All other who only had a passing interest feel free to skip this one.
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