Alrighty folks, now it’s my turn and The Wolfemann is going down!!! Just teasing… Man… Why are all of you so quick to want blood and mayhem? Can’t we all just get along?  Jeez…

Anyhow, I did go and see Chernobyl Diaries this afternoon. I was actually really interested in The Wolfemann’s review on the site but didn’t want to read the spoiler parts until I had seen it. However, my article will contain more spoilers and is meant as a companion piece to The Wolfemann’s.  Please read his article first:

The Wolfemann’s Article

I’m not going to rehash the storyline because The Wolfemann did a great job doing that in his article.  I’m just going to gloss over what we agree on and what we disagreed on.

Actual image from Pripyat taken from Wikipedia.org

Image taken from Pripyat with Chernobyl in the background

It’s funny that I felt the need to give a retort to The Wolfemann, because I actually agree with a lot of what he had to say… especially when it came to the environment. The abandoned and ruined city and the reactor settings were unbelievably creepy and I could have just watched a documentary crew that goes through these buildings and would have been suitably freaked out.  The next thing that I agree with The Wolfemann on is the camera was a little rough. Oddly enough, I did think that this was going to be a found-footage film by the looks of the trailer. The funny thing is that the trailer was full of scenes from the actual movie and not the first 3, or so, minutes that were actually found-footage style. The camera was so tremulous that it did appear to be filmed by one guy putting together a documentary. One other thing I agreed with The Wolfemann on is  on this subject:

Here is a quote from The Wolfemann’s article where I think he hit it right on the head:

Chernobyl Diaries was a brilliant example of taking your limitations, and not really knowing how to make your script fit inside of that little box.

However, I’ll give him that only when it comes to the camera-handling style that was being used.

One more thing to talk about before I discuss what The Wolfemann and I disagreed on… The characters in this kind of movie usually either annoy or bore the piss out of me. This was not the case in this film. We had four American kids and a foreign couple who actually seemed to be good people! Shocking… I know! These kids weren’t going around trying to mimic his or her favorite ill-behaved reality television star. They actually seemed like real people who had a future and actually seemed to care for each other instead of trying to tear each other down. No jealous bitch-slap fights… No pissing contests… etc. That was actually kind of refreshing to me.

Now, to the ending… This is where The Wolfemann and I somewhat disagree… The difference of opinion, for me, came where The Wolfemann was asking all sorts of questions because some of the elements of the film didn’t make sense to him… heck, the questions he asked were actually logical and smart! However, where my opinion differs is in the fact that here these people are, in this shit-ass situation and to make things worse, the government is involved. A government who knows what’s going on in this area want to keep it to themselves. We don’t know what the heck they might be doing to/with the deformed population of this city. In fact, they were apparently doing something special with the population on the day that the tour-group showed up. Uri, the tour guide who had taken many tour-groups to the abandoned city was turned away on this day because the government was performing “maintenance”… or at least that’s what he was told. We have no idea what “maintenance’ means. What’s worse about this whole thing folks, is the fact that these people are part of the Ukranian government (formerly part of the Soviet Union)… Hey… I realize that the cold war is over , and that the names of countries and borders that existed back then have been tossed too and fro, but I still remember that asshole Ivan Drago going after Mr. Red, White, and Blue himself, Rocky Balboa! Those mother effers are some mysteriously evil jerkoffs! Alright… I’m just kidding… kind of… What I mean is that here is a foreign government doing, heaven knows what, in this place and they don’t want anyone to know about it! I think that since we really don’t know what they’re doing or why they’re doing it, all of the things that happen in this movie are perfectly legit… including the abrupt ending where they tie off the last loose string. Now, don’t try to interpret that last part as some xenophobic rant. It just boils down to not quite understanding a culture and a government. It’s been said that we fear what we don’t understand… and, for better or worse, the culture of  Ukraine isn’t something I understand so there was an added uncertainty of what could have happened in that situation. I realize that explanation still isn’t completely PC… and I’m sure the government I “understand” does naughty things as well… but that’s just something that affected my experience of this movie.

After all of this, I ultimately agree with The Wolfemann on giving this movie a rental. I enjoyed it… but I went to an early showing where me and two other guys were in attendance. Nobody was talking and nobody turned on their damn cell phone… It’s funny how much the experience in the theater can affect my opinion of a movie… but I’ll save that for another article.

Poster taken from IMDB.com

This film just hit theaters today, and I don’t care about your stories about being at the midnight premiere of Avengers with all your buddies, having fun and watching the history-making resolution of over five years of film history into a single masterwork action film.  I don’t care about your stories of being there, part of the moment, part of the cultural zeitgeist as it happened.  I don’t care about your stories about going home with your lady afterwards and pretending to be Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, or Black Widow and Hawkeye, or anything like that.

*sniffs*

No, I was there for the first showing today of The Chernobyl Diaries, part of a discerning, exclusive, elite group of TWO people in the entire theater!  And I actually wasn’t related to the other one!  Or dating him, but that’s neither here nor there.

Seriously, folks, the theater was dead for this one.  Like I said, only two people.  Me, taking up my extra-wide stadium seat (I prefer them so I can nap if the movie’s a total loss), and some other guy, probably the sole dedicated horror fan in the small city of Delafield, WI.  In defense of the film, Delafield is a small town, and I was at the early-bird 10:45 showing.  But, to be frank, I suspect that this movie’s going to makes its money by being cheap.

I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?  Okay, before we get into the goods and the bads, I think it’s time.  For those of you who want to stay spoiler free, I’d give the film a Redbox, myself.  Maybe go out and catch it in the second-run theaters, or if you’re jonesing for some good, old-fashioned atmosphere, catch it in theaters.  But if you’re a gore hound, or analyzing the film too much?  Definitely a rental, at best.

“Guys, guys, listen to this!”

…

“You hear that?  That’s the sound of absolute spoilage.”

Chernobyl Diaries is the story of six dumbasses tourists who go on a tour of Pripyat, an entire city that was built to service the Chernobyl nuclear plant.  It was abandoned after the reactor went critical, leaving behind a ghost town unlike any other on Earth.

It starts out covering the journey through Europe of our three main protagonists (Chris, Natalie, and Amanda) as they make their way to Kiev to hook up with Paul, Chris’ brother.  This part of the film is done found-footage/montage style.  Arguably, this was a smart move, because is sets the audience up for the camera feel.

That’s one of the first things that I have to talk about.  This is not, I repeat is not a found footage film.  The first few minutes are, but the instant we cut to Paul reviewing their trip on an iPad, it’s being filmed traditionally.  The problem is… it still looks like it’s found footage.  The camera is obviously pretty cheap (I find myself thinking it might even be a handy-cam, unless it’s the same camera Oren bought to film Paranormal Activity with), and the cameraman is… well, he’s cheap.  It’s kind of like a found footage film, except that there’s no cameraman in the movie’s world, and the camera goes places where it couldn’t possibly go if the cameraman were with our heroes.

Which, some will argue, is a smart move to keep things feeling raw and untampered with.  Others will argue that it’s inexcusably bad cinematography, and that whoever the DoP was should be dragged through the streets of Pripyat by wild bears.

If you watch the movie, you’ll realize that was not a typo.

That’s what makes the first few minutes a possibly smart move.  On the one hand, it does get the audience into the “okay, grab the Dramamine” mindset to survive a film with shaky camerawork that moves around a lot.  On the other hand, it also gets confusing when the camera goes places that it couldn’t possibly be, or things are films that make no sense at all.  I decided after about 5 minutes or so that, no, it wasn’t found footage.

This is the biggest problem with the film.  I’d meant to save it for later, but it really is a problem for some people.  The movie doesn’t *look* professionally made.  But, then, this worked for Texas Chainsaw, and in a lot of ways it works for this too.  It does lend something to the idea of the entire situation being off-kilter and out of control.  The problem is… I don’t think that was on purpose.  Like Texas Chainsaw, you have to ask yourself if it’s a case of making the best out of a bad situation (no money), or just hard to watch.

On the other hand, that no-money situation worked for them in other cases.  For example, they did a lot of on-location shooting, rather than building sets or CGI’ing up the abandoned city.  This lends a physicality to the absolute desolation of the film-world that otherwise wouldn’t be there, because there really was nobody else around for miles and miles.

At any rate, back to the plot!  After hooking up with Paul, our new foursome spend a bit of time around Kiev, where we have some moments that are uncomfortably reminiscent of Hostel.  Case in point:

“The women here?  They love Americans, and they  are all crazy!”  It’s not a direct quote, but it’s damned close.  Of course, it’s out of the mouth of an American, not Uri the tour guide, but if even I recognize it?  It’s obvious.

Of course, shortly after saying that line, Chris goes and tells everybody that he’s got two days left to retirement going to propose to Natalie, his girlfriend, when they get to Moscow.  Paul comes around the next morning, and says that they’ve just got one last mission to finish got an incredible opportunity to do something that nobody else they know has done.  They’re going to Chernobyl.

Chris, perhaps realizing that his plans to propose to Natalie mark him as Doomed to Die, objects.  He’s overruled (in Natalie’s defense, she didn’t know Chris was going to propose, so maybe she thought that their being in love would make them The Final Couple instead), and our group goes to meet Uri.  Uri turns out to be former special forces… a fact that never, ever comes up again.  They hook up with another couple (not like that, you pervs!) and go off to Pripyat.

Now, this is why it’s hard to review this movie.  Despite what it might sound like, I enjoyed this movie!  It wasn’t great, it certainly wasn’t Paranormal Activity, but it was enjoyable.  It’s a lot like junk food.  It’s quick, cheap, and not especially good for you… but it satisfies a craving.  Sure, it’s a craving for the salty fat of McDonald’s, but it’s still a craving satisfied.

This movie spends over half of its running time building atmosphere.  And this, it does brilliantly.  How much of that is because Brad Parker’s a good director, and how much of it is because they’re filming in a place that actually is as desolate as they’re saying, who knows?  But either way, it works.  By the time we reach the half-way point, and the shit starts to hit the fan, you’re on edge and expecting it to hit.  The fact that you never get a good look at the movie’s monsters works quite a bit in its favor too, since you just get glimpses of deformed *things*.

By the time that shit *really* goes back, when they find Uri on the morning of Day 2, things start moving pretty damned fast, and they only get faster until we reach our thrilling conclusion….

Where I really start to wonder if Oren Peli actually knows how to write a satisfying ending.  To be fair, I haven’t read his short story that this is based on, so maybe the Van Dykes (any relation?  No idea) who helped with the script fucked it up.  But as the producer, he should’ve had the power to make them redo it if that’s the case.

The thing is, the ending is… confusing.  Everything we’ve seen so far indicates that this is something that’s been building for a long time.  There’s evidence of *infants* in this little colony of inbred mutant hillbillies nuclear plant support workers.  They’ve built a creche.  They’ve learned how to disable vehicles, break into them to get at prey, put out human-looking bait to lure a group into splitting up, imitate the sounds of crying babies… Hell, even Uri seems to know that something’s up when he pulls a gun out of his glove compartment and, when he gets called on it, he tells them that they’ll be grateful that he *does* have that gun.

As one might expect, while they are grateful in the end, it doesn’t really help them.  Maybe if he’d had more than one spare clip of ammo it would’ve been more useful.

All of this points at… well, what this movie *should* have been about.  A colony of inbred mutants, people who either didn’t escape Pripyat or who tried to return for their things only to be unknowingly locked inside.  They’ve since devolved, become feral, driven insane by radiation poisoning and rampant mutations from breeding in the shadow of Chernobyl.  They’ve collected some of their old belongings, barely remembering what they’re for, and built a new culture where their young grow up in creches nearer the reactor, so that as they grow they become increasingly deformed, “blessed” by the radioactive spirits that this dying society has come to worship.

All through this though, they’ve retained (and honed) their cunning and wiles, learned how to disable vehicles subtly, learned how to deal with a force that has superior weapons  (and physical conditioning and sanity) through superior numbers and the power of raw, unbridled madness.  And, somehow realizing that their race is doomed without new blood, maybe they don’t eat all of their prey… maybe some are kept to be brought into the colony… new blood, as it were.

This could have all been done, could have been incredibly chilling in blending H.P. Lovecraft’s The Lurking Fear (one of his most underrated and horribly adapted stories) and The Hills Have Eyes.  There were things here and there that hinted at it… but they didn’t go there in the end.

Instead, we’re told in the course of a couple minutes that all those monsters who appear to have been living there for some time?  They’re escaped radiation patients from a secret Ukranian (?) hospital who moved back in.  They’ve all been rounded up now, but of course this all has to be kept secret.  So they chuck our apparent survivor into the open “pit” of a cell that the ‘patients’ are kept in, and let them tear her apart and devour her alive, slamming the window shut before the credits.

This ending comes out of nowhere.  There’s no hint of this happening.  And it makes no sense with what we’ve seen.

If they’ve just escaped recently, where the blazes did the misshapen baby monster we see for a second or two come from?

Why are they feral and prone to hunting people for food?  Even in a Soviet mental hospital, the patients were fed, so they’d be thinking of people as food dispensers, not food sources.  Why would most of them be reasonably young (or, Hell, even alive?) over 20 years after the disaster that poisoned them?

Is this just how the Ukraine supposedly handles its radiation poisoning victims?  If so, methinks that Oren has mixed up the modern day Ukraine and the Soviet Union itself.  Sure, the Ukraine isn’t great, but if anything, they’re working to get the Russians to try and repair the damage done by Chernobyl (the problem?  Both nations are pretty much broke.)  Is this a Russian hospital?  Who knows, we don’t get enough information to work on.

All in all, it’s a neat little polka dotted bow on paisley wrapping paper – it doesn’t make any sense, and that only makes the underlying problems with the rest of the wrapping stand out all the more.

I suspect that, again, the budget is what killed this movie.  So much of it smacks of “if only we’d been able to….”

“If only we’d been able to hire a good cameraman.”

“If only we’d been able to give the script one more good polish.”

“If only we’d been able to take this a different direction.”

“If only we’d been able to capture Paranormal Activity’s lightning in a bottle and uncork it again for this.”

That’s the real shame of this movie.  Because of Oren Peli’s involvement, and the shaky camera work (frankly, it was BETTER in Paranormal Activity!), the comparisons will be drawn.  And Chernobyl Diaries is no Paranormal Activity… it’s not even Paranormal Activity 3, viewed in a vacuum.

Paranormal Activity was a brilliant example in taking your limitations and making them work for you.  Chernobyl Diaries was a brilliant example of taking your limitations, and not really knowing how to make your script fit inside of that little box.

And that’s what’s going to hurt it the most, in the long run.

As stated, I give it a rental.  If you like the atmosphere, then buy it, because you’ll probably enjoy it enough to be able to toss it in most any time.  It’s even the type of film you *could* show a non-horror fan, since there’s very little gore in it!

But if you’re focused on  the fineries of filmmaking, or getting something original… you’[ll probably want to give this one a pass.

Final Verdict:  Redbox it.  Probably won’t have to wait long for the chance.