ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Manthast Absolutely amazing

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Benas Mcloughlin Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The Movie Diorama 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.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Do not expect a true visit, even extreme, of Chernobyl. The film was shot in Serbia and in Hungary. There are so many dead cities in the world and anyway most scenes were shot either in some "incognito" landscape that could be anywhere and in ruined mostly underground places, constructions, tunnels and other structures that probably were made of cardboard or plywood. It is a horror movie using a real historic drama, the explosion of Chernobyl's nuclear plant, as a setting both in time and place. All the rest is fantasy, subnormal fantasy actually. Could there be any survivor to the catastrophe? Apart from a few insects like cockroaches that are immune to radiations, immune though not entirely indifferent, since radiations may cause some mutations from one generation to the next and since insects are naturally short- lived they may have five or six generations per year, good morning mutations then, apart from some insects then, other animal species that are rather a lot longer- lived, survival and even mutations are more than problematic. Nuclear explosions of that type leads to massive death. The survivors were irradiated and then developed serious diseases like cancer, leukemia and some other ailments that are deadly, more or less fast. So the main idea of the film that humans and other mammal species actually did survive is hardly believable and what's more nature cannot keep more individuals than the surrounding resources can permit. It is thus highly improbable that great numbers of mutated humans could survive in such conditions and they would have to adapt to radiations and irradiated plants and animals. Yet nature can always survive any catastrophe with time. It is highly possible that vegetal life will be the first one to mutate and take the territory over. Then water animals, fish and other species living in water would adapt or mutate rather fast and thus survive like insects. It is a lot more problematic for mammals. So the only objective of the film is to frighten the gall out of you. It succeeds or it does not according to your sensitiveness: not everyone reacts the same way to such simple frightening visions.But the film is interesting to show some human characteristics not in Chernobyl but in everyday life, characteristics that are exploited in this film for commercial reasons.First it shows very well that in any situation, even the worst and most desperate, there will be a Yuri or a Smith or a Dupont who will take advantage of it and try to make money from it. It will be all the easier since there is an audience for any extreme endeavor or adventure, in fact for extreme anything. Then the second remark is that since an audience does exist and has always existed such morbid and mortiferous subjects, provided they have a horror oriented side, and it is the case here, will be highly welcome in the B-movie industry: low cost and good profit.What are people afraid of? The answer is simple. Abnormal and aggressive beings, be they living dead or zombies or monstrous animals in size or in voraciousness. People are afraid of bears, wolves, wild dogs (dingoes in Australia) and of course the whole wild feline family. The film exploits wild dogs, wolves and bears. Perfect, plus some monstrous mutated and mutating river animals, mostly fish. And of course some human mutated and mutating survivors, hence living zombies. The third element is about how such a territory can be protected. In fact, it can't really since animals will migrate anyway just like radiations, fish down rivers, wild mammals in forests and even living zombies will try to get out. So the army will have to be there all around, but you cannot really close a vast territory, twenty kilometers in radius, more than one thousand two hundred and fifty square kilometers. The film goes slightly beyond and they pretend that some of the human survivors are kept in some reserve and fed with extreme tourists the soldiers recuperate on the site. That is not supposed to surprise anyone since we are in Ukraine and at most they have been well trained in inhumanity by the Russians know up to 1990 as the Soviets. The anti-Soviet, anti-Russian and anti-Ukrainian aspect is not supposed to be a surprise to us since the West lives on a strong bias against anything Russian, and at times anything Slavic or Slavonic. Only the Catholic or Protestant Slavs can be excused, hence the Poles. And maybe the Slovaks and the Czechs. All the others are not even decent enough to have a standard Christian religion and they live on some Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Orthodox religion whose may patriarch is in Moscow. This anti- Russian and anti-Slavic bias is very short- sighted, but it is what is going to bring Trump down, with real news as much as fake news, since with him what's true is fake and what's fake is true. Enjoy the nice very tame horror true story: it was in fact a lot worse in reality than what is shown.Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

begob A reluctant group of American tourists are persuaded by their chancer buddy to join an extreme tour, led by a local commando, of a city abandoned 25 years earlier after a nuclear reactor disaster. They discover that radiation is not the only hazard ...Great idea for this, so the fact it follows a formula doesn't drain it of interest. The characters are established fairly well, with the actors obviously enjoying themselves, and the pace is good as we soon get inside the danger zone. But there's a steady decline in the quality of story telling following that. The first jump scare, involving a fish, is cocked up badly, which suggests inexperienced director, and that's repeated later on in a scene on a bus. Others have noted the stupidity of the decisions made by the characters, which takes you out of the story, and the characterisation peters out once the action gets heavy. Various aspects aren't explored properly, like the fish threat or the strangeness of Chernobyl's wildlife (eg. well documented that spiders there weave weird webs). And then you have the real threat, suggested with unspooky touches (photo of the window), that then comes to the fore in a rushed climax and twist. Not convincing, and I think they missed a trick in not emphasising the wildlife as a foretaste of the hell about to be unleashed.The camera is mostly 3rd person POV, breaking into 1st person occasionally, and I'm not sure how this affected the story. There is shaky cam, but not nauseating. The music was fine, not overbearing.Overall, the logline to this movie had lots of promise but they probably needed to rip up the screenplay a few more times.

billy_bob369 Excellent movie. Don't listen to the schmuck from Canada at the beginning of the reviews. Guessing most watched this movie several times in order to put up a negative review so they could pick it apart.3 words to all those morons out there....."SUSPENSE OF DISBELIEF". Go into ANY movie not following Freud's 3 little words means your movie-going experience will flop.This movie is fairly well-acted and quite startling and even a bit scary............IF you "get into it".Trust me, I'm unbiased and a highly balanced reviewer. This movie is tantamount to the quality and cinematography of Quarantine/Quarantine 2.......which were excellent.Predictability isn't a flaw really but rather the way life actually is.Movies that aren't predictable yet super freaky or scary are far and few between as most ideas have been realized and brought to fruition so if you can't SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEFS.........Then don't watch movies anymore as you're hopeless.