Six tourists hire an extreme tour guide who takes them to the abandoned city Pripyat, the former home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. During their exploration, they soon discover they are not alone.
The early stages of Chernobyl Diaries promise some tension, with Diatchenko an engaging, enigmatic focus, but visual effect supervisor-turned first time director Bradley Parker quickly runs out of creative ideas, making this disaster-tourism trip well worth avoiding.
A shameless repackaging of boilerplate horror clichés, the fallout here is boredom.
A better film might have been able to justify the characters’ actions as the credible responses of panicked individuals in a disorientated state, but here it’s hard to escape the notion that they do stupid things purely so the story can progress. Not that it really does progress.
One instance aside, Chernobyl Diaries is lacking in laughs and ingenuity. It is content to stick to the script laid out in countless movies before.
Diaries is dark and gruesome, but with little in the way of genuine shock or surprise, you should expect the expected.
Wasting a decent premise.
As sinister presences emerge from the shadows, it gets dull.
The group-in-peril plot you'll have seen many times before but you'll not forget that town in a hurry.
Doesn’t set out to reinvent the horror wheel but succeeds as solid genre entertainment.
There's a great idea hiding in there somewhere – shame they didn't find it. And there aren't any diaries...
General release. Check local listings for show times.