What better way for me to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster than finally giving this movie a better review? Yes, that happened on April 26, 1986.
After taking a break from watching films both Friday and Saturday, this film was watched for the first time in about 13 years earlier today; the only thing I recalled before today was a moment or two… and a hysterical Russian named URI. He was more enjoyable than the goofball irritating quartet of young American adults who are on a European vacation and the biggest jackass of the group randomly meets Uri, who does “extreme tours” of Pripyat, the city right by the nuclear power plant.
I had no memory that the quartet of Americans were joined by a New Zealander and a Norwegian, who weren’t quite as frustrating. But man, was Uri great. He’s exactly what you’d imagine “middle-aged former member of the Russian military who does tours in an old UAZ military van” to look and sound like. After wandering around the ruins in the abandoned town (to the film’s credit, they did create or find reasonable facsimiles of Pripyat as they filmed in Hungary or Serbia, including the Ferris wheel in the town’s amusement park that’s one of the most famous images of the ruin), things go wrong as they have to sneak in but are stuck in town, because reasons.
The movie has a found footage flavor-everything is shot on handheld cameras-without actually being found footage except for one scene. Not a surprise, given that a co-writer and producer was Oren Peli, of Paranormal Activity fame. At least he has that franchise along with Insidious, although when it comes to his limited writing credits, the first PA is by far the highlight. The Chernobyl Diaries is the standard nonsense w/ expected jump scares & goofball young adults you probably want to see suffer gruesome fates.
The setting being decently brought to life and the Uri character (I was saddened when it was just learned that actor Dimitri Diatchenko passed away around this time 6 years ago) were not enough to make this standard, predictable film better than average. There’s no need to check out the film unless you have at least a small obsession w/ what happened at Chernobyl… and you might shake your head at how the victims of the tragedy were portrayed.
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