Reviewed by Melissa Antoinette Garza
I was really looking forward to this film when I saw the preview. It looked frightening and seemed to have a good premise. The hullabaloo surrounding it made it even more intriguing to me. The fact that individuals were protesting it because it was based on an actual event made me more inclined to view it.
When I rented it, I was instantly excited because it wasn’t a mockumentary. It was an actual film. It received extra kudos for that fact alone.
Overall, it started with great promise. Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) a tough as nails tour guide ignores warning from the military and takes a group of excited college kids to the abandoned city of Pripyat. He uses a back route ensuring no one knows they are out there to take them to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
Soon, everyone is faced with bears, dogs and angry ghosts. The detector shows an increase of radiation.
Unfortunately, it appears that the movie can’t decide what it wants to be and is a sort of free-for-all. That wouldn’t be so bad if the film actually had some scary parts – it doesn’t.
The acting is decent enough and the reactions from the actors during what is supposed to be a horrifying experience works – but the scenes themselves fall flat. Even when one discloses they took a picture and saw someone in the window, there’s not a hint of eeriness to it. More than that, I is revealed too late to the crew. It would have been much more effective had that been something she disclosed the moment it happened, prior to them being unable to leave.
I would have loved for this to be great. Chernobyl was one of the most horrifying historical events of all time. Creating a horror film around that should have been easy. This just wasn’t it. Perhaps, if they do a sequel and concentrate on the ghosts rather than animal attacks they can make something great.
Overall Scared Stiff Rating: 4/10
