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Chernobyl Diaries
Warner Bros. // R // October 16, 2012 // Region 0
List Price: $35.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Okay, it's been a pretty routine jaunt through Europe so far. Y'know, the Tower of London, the canals of Venice, the Coliseum... Whatever. Tourist traps. Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) has an altogether different plan in mind when his kid brother and company finally make it all the way to Kiev for a visit: extreme tourism. Why settle for being the eight hojillionth
American to wave around their Lonely Planet guides and pose in front of the Eiffel Tower when they can stomp around the carcass of Chernobyl? Close enough, anyway; their tour guide Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) lugs 'em over to the abandoned city of Pripyat, if you want to be fussy about it. When reactor number four went kablooey a quarter-century ago, the nearby residents of Pripyat had mere minutes to evacuate, and the decaying city they left behind has been largely untouched since. Even though the radiation levels are generally safe around the area, there's still no sign of life whatsoever. Wait, except for that bear. And that mutant fish with the rows of razor-sharp teeth. And that pack of mutant German shepherds. And that small army of mutant...well, that would be telling.
With Oren Peli's name plastered all over the trailers and poster art, I had a very different picture bobbing around in my head as to what kind of movie Chernobyl Diaries was gonna be. It's not a radioactive Paranormal Activity, mostly -- but not completely! -- shying away from the found footage approach that made Peli his bones. It's instead an aggressively uninspired take on the tried-and-true haunted house formula, with only its backdrop and a slightly larger playing field setting it apart from a couple hundred thousand other horror flicks.
Conceptually, a genre film set in and around Chernobyl ought to be wildly effective. I mean, I'm unnerved just looking at still photos of the remains of Pripyat. Chernobyl Diaries attempts to capture much of that same decaying atmosphere, and maybe it's not all that surprising that the movie is at its best when it immerses itself in that sort of imagery. In the down moments -- when nothing overtly horrific is happening and the tourists are skulking through the remains of a once-bustling city -- Chernobyl Diaries does a brilliant job building
a sense of dread and unease. ...and then there's everything else.
The meat of Chernobyl Diaries is an hour of people running around screaming and crying, generally in the dark and with obscured, blink-and-nevermind-you-missed-it glances of whatever it is that's tormenting them. The movie never manages to generate any real tension or suspense...just filler to bridge a parade of jump scares. I'd definitely chalk myself up as a fan of the atmosphere, and some of the jolts connect, but it's just...really routine and derivative. The characters are pretty thinly sketched straight across the board, and they become more and more interchangeable as the movie slogs along. Jonathan Sadowski's asshole brother is the only particularly memorable character, and Sadowski is far and away the most capable actor of the bunch too. 'Course, when you're sharing the screen with Jesse McCartney, I guess everyone comes across like Olivier. The thin plot and meek approach to horror come across as a watered-down version of The Descent or The Hills Have Eyes. Lotsa shaky-cam. Very little gore. Paint-by-numbers horror all around. Rent It.
Video
Yeah, yeah, there are a few minutes' worth of camcorders and camera phones, but by and large, the photography in Chernobyl Diaries is surprisingly slick and polished. Well, and shaky, but that's kind of par for the course. Outside of a few intentionally rough-hewn moments, this high-def presentation is crisp and nicely detailed. Contrast remains rock solid throughout, and black levels are appropriately deep and inky for a movie set largely in the dead of night. Colors, meanwhile, come through about as well as the gloomy, desaturated palette will allow. No heavy-handed processing or missteps in the compression ever intrude. Kind of a lousy movie, sure, but at least its release on Blu-ray looks nice enough.
Chernobyl Diaries is dished out on a single layer Blu-ray disc. The movie's presented without any matting and has been encoded with AVC. An anamorphic widescreen DVD is along for the ride too.
Audio
One thing that intrigues me about this six-channel, 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is its sparing but effective use of the surround channels. It seems like a very deliberate choice to keep the rears dead silent for the bulk of the movie, reserving them to make the greatest possible impact: unseen creatures skittering around, frenzied mutant dogs swarming from every direction, the creaking of that rickety van, eerie drops of water...you know how it goes. Chernobyl Diaries' dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, and it's balanced very well in the mix. The score occasionally makes the subwoofer snarl, and it kind of goes without saying that the stings punctuating the jump scares are colossal. No real complaints.
Along for the ride are Dolby Digital 5.1 dubs in French, German, and Spanish. If you're really into that sort of technical information, the Spanish track is
encoded at a bitrate of 640kbps while the others are DVD quality at 448kbps. Subtitles are served up in English (SDH), Spanish, French, and German.
Extras
Mercifully short, clocking in around six minutes in all.
The Final Word
Uninspired but still vaguely watchable, Chernobyl Diaries is an unnerving backdrop in search of a movie. Chances are that you already have The Descent and The Hills Have Eyes on the shelf, so why shell out twenty bucks to buy this third-rate knockoff? With few extras to speak of and borderline-zero replay value, Chernobyl Diaries is at best a marginal rental, and even that's being kinda generous. Rent It.
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
With Oren Peli's name plastered all over the trailers and poster art, I had a very different picture bobbing around in my head as to what kind of movie Chernobyl Diaries was gonna be. It's not a radioactive Paranormal Activity, mostly -- but not completely! -- shying away from the found footage approach that made Peli his bones. It's instead an aggressively uninspired take on the tried-and-true haunted house formula, with only its backdrop and a slightly larger playing field setting it apart from a couple hundred thousand other horror flicks.
Conceptually, a genre film set in and around Chernobyl ought to be wildly effective. I mean, I'm unnerved just looking at still photos of the remains of Pripyat. Chernobyl Diaries attempts to capture much of that same decaying atmosphere, and maybe it's not all that surprising that the movie is at its best when it immerses itself in that sort of imagery. In the down moments -- when nothing overtly horrific is happening and the tourists are skulking through the remains of a once-bustling city -- Chernobyl Diaries does a brilliant job building
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
The meat of Chernobyl Diaries is an hour of people running around screaming and crying, generally in the dark and with obscured, blink-and-nevermind-you-missed-it glances of whatever it is that's tormenting them. The movie never manages to generate any real tension or suspense...just filler to bridge a parade of jump scares. I'd definitely chalk myself up as a fan of the atmosphere, and some of the jolts connect, but it's just...really routine and derivative. The characters are pretty thinly sketched straight across the board, and they become more and more interchangeable as the movie slogs along. Jonathan Sadowski's asshole brother is the only particularly memorable character, and Sadowski is far and away the most capable actor of the bunch too. 'Course, when you're sharing the screen with Jesse McCartney, I guess everyone comes across like Olivier. The thin plot and meek approach to horror come across as a watered-down version of The Descent or The Hills Have Eyes. Lotsa shaky-cam. Very little gore. Paint-by-numbers horror all around. Rent It.
Video
Yeah, yeah, there are a few minutes' worth of camcorders and camera phones, but by and large, the photography in Chernobyl Diaries is surprisingly slick and polished. Well, and shaky, but that's kind of par for the course. Outside of a few intentionally rough-hewn moments, this high-def presentation is crisp and nicely detailed. Contrast remains rock solid throughout, and black levels are appropriately deep and inky for a movie set largely in the dead of night. Colors, meanwhile, come through about as well as the gloomy, desaturated palette will allow. No heavy-handed processing or missteps in the compression ever intrude. Kind of a lousy movie, sure, but at least its release on Blu-ray looks nice enough.
Chernobyl Diaries is dished out on a single layer Blu-ray disc. The movie's presented without any matting and has been encoded with AVC. An anamorphic widescreen DVD is along for the ride too.
Audio
One thing that intrigues me about this six-channel, 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is its sparing but effective use of the surround channels. It seems like a very deliberate choice to keep the rears dead silent for the bulk of the movie, reserving them to make the greatest possible impact: unseen creatures skittering around, frenzied mutant dogs swarming from every direction, the creaking of that rickety van, eerie drops of water...you know how it goes. Chernobyl Diaries' dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, and it's balanced very well in the mix. The score occasionally makes the subwoofer snarl, and it kind of goes without saying that the stings punctuating the jump scares are colossal. No real complaints.
Along for the ride are Dolby Digital 5.1 dubs in French, German, and Spanish. If you're really into that sort of technical information, the Spanish track is
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
Extras
Mercifully short, clocking in around six minutes in all.
- Uri's Extreme Tours Infomercial (1 min.; HD): Labeling something that barely breaks the minute mark an "infomercial" seems kinda misleading, but whatever. As if you need me to spell this out, it's a deliberately cheap-looking in-character promo for Uri's extreme tourism business.
- Chernobyl Conspiracy? (2 min.; HD): This viral promo -- which you can watch right now, if you want -- teases at the terrible truths buried in Pripyat.
- Deleted Scenes (3 min.; HD): Just two of 'em this time around. Paul toasts to his guests' arrival, and there's also a "wait, that's it?" alternate ending.
The Final Word
Uninspired but still vaguely watchable, Chernobyl Diaries is an unnerving backdrop in search of a movie. Chances are that you already have The Descent and The Hills Have Eyes on the shelf, so why shell out twenty bucks to buy this third-rate knockoff? With few extras to speak of and borderline-zero replay value, Chernobyl Diaries is at best a marginal rental, and even that's being kinda generous. Rent It.
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