Chernobyl Diaries

Chernobyl Diaries - R (Alcon Entertainment, Filmnation)

Where to start off with this movie...I guess at my expectations. I went into this film expecting a good scare and decent acting with an epic ending; I got two of the three.


A good scare I definitely got. I take it that when one yells F***K in the theatre, it means you're scared. Not giving too much away, the wild animals and zombie-esque looking people are more than enough to frighten anybody. In this area, the film did excel. Another aspect I enjoyed was that when the major characters are introduced I was getting a sort of romantic undertone and I was beginning to think that we were going to have to put up with some sort of romance. Ending with the guy sacrificing himself because he just loves the girl so much. That, thankfully, did not happen. I take my hat off to the writers for keeping away from this hackneyed romantic subplot that can destroy any horror film. My criticisms are that it does take what seems like a while before the film actually takes off; okay, these young people are going traveling through Europe...great for them...we get it. Another problem I had with the movie is that I believe the writers could have done so much more with the story they had. How did these people survive radiation? Are they the descendants of the original inhabitants of Chernobyl? They could have really explored the background of Chernobyl and the disaster that happened there. However, they did not bother to dig that deep into the history of where they were. I expect that giving some background story would have amped this movie up a notch. I assume they decided against that route because they wanted the audience to know exactly what the characters knew so that one can relate to the situation. The audience is left guessing right along with the characters. But, to me that also seems like a flaw...let the characters figure out some kind of background. It can be beneficial to keep the audience guessing and maybe even have a cliffhanger ending, but there was simply too much mystery for my taste. 


Now the acting. There is honestly not much to say about it. All performances were solid; nobody was exceptionally horrible, but no one stood out either. Except maybe Jesse McCartney, but that was just because I was thinking: Why is Jesse McCartney in this? However, he did a better job at his character than what I expected from him. Jonathan Sadowski was also fairly good as McCartney's irresponsible older brother. I did have a problem with some of the decisions made by characters in the heat of the moment, but that's not really the actors' faults; and that is common with any horror film. Like I said, not much to talk about.


The ending. I'm not going to give anything away, but personally I thought the ending ruined the whole movie. You know if you're listening to a concert and the band or orchestra or whatever plays a bad note at the end and it kind of ruins the whole thing? This is what happened in this film. It left me with a definite bad taste in my mouth. It was almost to the point where I just couldn't comprehend why they would end a movie like that. I get what they were going for, but it by no means worked. 


Overall, a solid film with good actors that carried their performances through. Nothing stood out to me about the film. There were no spectacular stunts, camerawork, or CGI effects, but for a film that was made with 1 million dollars, I was not expecting anything groundbreaking. Would I recommend it? If you have nothing else to do and are looking for a scare, you should consider this movie, especially if you can get over horrible endings.


Rating:
*** out of 5
Trailer for Chernobyl Diaries