A 'Chernobyl' Diary better left unwritten

If ever there is a prime example of Hollywood’s tendency to latch onto the latest gimmick and shamelessly milk it for all its worth, ‘Chernobyl Diaries’ is it. This ‘found footage’ docudrama is the most recent offering in a genre first made popular by ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ then rejuvenated in the ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise. With its low production cost and unknown actors, found footage films don’t have to gross nearly as much as CG- and star-heavy blockbusters to realize a good profit, and unfortunately suckers like me keep giving them reasons to make more.

Conceived by Oren Peli, who gave us ‘Paranormal Activity,’ ‘Chernobyl Diaries’ is set in the town of Pripyat near the infamous site of a nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986, when a group of young friends decided that taking an ‘extreme tour’ of the place wouldn’t be a bad idea. Of course, when they reach the doomed town strange things started to happen and they find that they are in fact ‘not alone,’ despite the assurances of their ex-Russian Spetznaz tour guide. What was supposed to be a fun and adventure-filled trip soon turned out to be their worst nightmare (big surprise!) and threatened their very lives.

I usually am very forgiving when it comes to ‘found footage’ films but, quite simply, ‘Chernobyl Diaries’ is uninspired, tepid and entirely devoid of tension and suspense, with stock characters whose fate you just don’t care for. The radiation-altered mutants (spoiler you say, really, what else did you expect?) who terrorize our group of young twenty-somethings are anything but scary, as were the cheap scares the movie employed to make us jump, like the bear that crashed through an abandoned house in one of the early scenes. Even the ‘big reveal’ at the end hinting at a government conspiracy wasn’t much of a twist at all, since I guessed it when the group was stopped at the checkpoint before they entered the town. Take my advice and save yourself the money on this one.

2 out of 10 (and that’s being generous)