Chernobyl DiariesDir: Bradley Parker
Oren Peli, the executive producer and scriptwriter behind the box-office hit franchise Paranormal Activity, provided the script for and helped produce the new documentary-style horror Chernobyl Diaries, which opened around Ireland last week.
The plot may seem strangely familiar: a group of tourists is looking for an adventure in eastern Europe – in this case, Ukraine – when all of a sudden they meet a stranger who offers them a trip to Pripyat, the ghost town where workers at Chernobyl nuclear power plant lived until the 1986 disaster. After their arrival in the town, their car doesn’t start and their guide gets lost, and then the real trouble starts…
If you’ve seen more than one thriller or horror in the last few years, you won’t be surprised about any turning point or shocking moment here. There are no innovative ideas going on here, with Oren Peli’s script seemingly constructed from a pre-made kit. Although the film looks impressive technically, a negative impression dominates.
And aside from the banal story, there’s a distasteful, disrespectful element to the whole enterprise. Is it responsible to portray victims of a very real tragedy as “zombies”? Is it responsible to use a place where more than 4,000 people lost their lives as the setting for a collection of cheap scares? My answer to such questions is as short as the dialogue in Chernobyl Diaries: No.