Chernobyl Diaries (2012)
Directed by Bradley Parker
A group of six tourists looking to go off the beaten path, hire an 'extreme tour guide' who, ignoring warnings, takes them into the city of Pripyat, the former home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, but now a deserted town since the disaster more than 25 years earlier. After a brief exploration of the abandoned city, the group members find themselves stranded, only to discover that they are not alone.
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17 films that influenced Chernobyl Diaries
What critics say influenced Chernobyl Diaries
Scenes involving a very big something (we'll keep it on the down-low) barreling through an empty apartment building, another involving a pack of wild dogs and a rickety bridge, a run-in with a child-sized figure standing motionless in the moonlight, and a cat-and-mouse game in a kitchen reminding of the velociraptor sequence in 1993's "Jurassic Park" are just a few memorable set-pieces of many.
Bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to Craven’s 1977 shocker, “The Hills Have Eyes” (which spawned a marvelous 2006 remake from Alexandre Aja), the creators of “Chernobyl Diaries” have a lot of explaining to do.
Shot for $15,000, it's gone on to be one of the most profitable movies of all time, alongside its found-footage inspiration, The Blair Witch Project .
Though Diaries mostly abandons the vid-cam aesthetic of the Paranormal franchise, in all other ways, it’s The Hills Have Eyes meets The Blair Witch Project , a flashlight tour through a stupid urban legend, with the unseemly authenticity only real devastation can provide.
If you are a fan of "Paranormal Activity" reality-type horror stories, the ones pioneered by "The Blair Witch Project," you might like 2012's "Chernobyl Diaries."
The movie starts off okay, shades of Eli Roth’s Hostel , as freewheeling 20ish travellers Natalie and Amanda (Olivia Dudley and Devin Kelley) are seen gallivanting at all the tourist stops in Europe with Natalie¹s boyfriend, Chris (pop star Jesse McCartney).
"Chernobyl Diaries" is nothing but another take on the endangered American tourists subgenre of such films as "Turistas" and "Hostel."
With elements of “Hostel,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” and “Night of the Living Dead,” “Chernobyl Diaries” certainly gets points for wacked-out originality.
We’ve been on similar tours: “Turistas” tossed young people to their deaths in Brazil; “Hostel” tortured them in Slovakia.
They're entitled and rude at times, sure, but there's not the sense of panicked paranoia that fed the likes of Hostel and Turistas, that feeling that everyone in the rest of the world secretly does want to kill us.
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With elements of “Hostel,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” and “Night of the Living Dead,” “Chernobyl Diaries” certainly gets points for wacked-out originality.
Directed by Bradley Parker, who worked as a visual effects supervisor on Let Me In, Chernobyl Diaries is produced and based on a story by Oren Peli, the creator of the Paranormal Activity franchise and ABC series The River.
Bradley Parker, a special effects supervisor on films such as 2010's " Let Me In ," makes his taut directorial debut under the tutelage of one Mr. Oren Peli, the creator of 2009's " Paranormal Activity " who produces and, along with Carey Van Dyke & Shane Van Dyke, writes here.
That gets in the way of even the few relatively successful suspense sequences orchestrated by director Bradley Parker (a visual effects pro with credits including "Let Me In" and "Fight Club").
The result is akin to pretty much any horror flick (or a group version of "I Am Legend") where young people enter spooky places and are picked off one by one.
Best described as “I Am Legend” meets “Paranormal Activity,” “Chernobyl Diaries” is a pretty slick little film.
Horror films are often the first to comment on the mass-scale traumas of the real world, but those traumas are usually sublimated in metaphor, like George Romero’s zombies or the killing floor in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .
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Bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to Craven’s 1977 shocker, “The Hills Have Eyes” (which spawned a marvelous 2006 remake from Alexandre Aja), the creators of “Chernobyl Diaries” have a lot of explaining to do.
Even lazy horror fans will notice similarities in style and/or story to The Hills Have Eyes , The Blair Witch Project , and The Ruins .
(Turistas and The Ruins are two other examples.)