On our only trip to Iceland so far, we took a couple of Superjeep tours. One of those was to the top of a glacier which, on the way there, appeared to be solid wall of white blocking out part of the sky. The journey up and back down again was on roads which had unexpected had so much snow just that morning that air had to be taken out of the tires for the ascent and then reinflated for the return. Much of the drive was like being on a rollercoaster, though with a track which wouldn’t stop shifting. The experience was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. I honestly thought we could die at any moment and had resigned myself to that possibility.
The tourists in 2012’s Chernobyl Diaries are on an illicit tour of the titular facility, and they will face much higher stakes than my wife and I did in Iceland. First, the Pripyat area where the titular disaster happened is officially off-limits, though guide Dimitri Diatchenko has an arrangement with guards at the checkpoint to take in yet another Jeep full of tourists each day. On this particular day, however, the guards refuse admittance because “maintenance” is going on. I’m not sure what that would have entailed before not long before I wrote this, when a Russian attack damaged the dome built over the reactor.
Diatchenko knows of an alternate entrance and sneaks the group in anyway. Admittedly, Jonathan Sadowski is the pushiest of the tourists he has this day and, even from little we have seen of him so far, you just know he wouldn’t stop pressing until the man found a way. Also in the Jeep is Sadowski’s brother, played by Jesse McCartney and that man’s girlfriend Olivia Taylor Dudley. Those two have brought their friend Devin Kelley, on whom Sadowski is obviously crushing. There there’s a couple played by Nathan Phillips and Ingrid Bolsø Berdal. I didn’t catch which country they are from, so let’s just say “Europe”. Hey, I’m an American—we think Scandinavia is a country.
These characters are so barely defined that it would normally be difficult to be concerned for them. And yet, things go badly very quickly and to an except that anybody in this peril would be engaging.
The first portent is one ugly mutated fish the group sees washed up on the river’s shore. That doesn’t phase Yuri, but he is unnerved by animal carcasses they find in the area with the apartment towers. Even abandoned, wild animals tend to avoid the town.
But it wasn’t any animal which sabotages the distributor cap of the van while the group is exploring one of the apartment buildings. With that, our cast is stuck in the van overnight. Something which astonished me is they leave the interior lights on. First, that will inevitably drain the battery. Secondly, things outside the van can see inside of it. Lastly, the people inside can’t see anything outside of it, given the light reflected on the windows.
Still, they can hear sounds outside the van and their guide goes to investigate. It is a good thing this ex-military man has a gun. What I found odd is McCartney freaks out about this. As for myself, I would definitely want my guide on a trip into a forbidden area like this to be packing heat. Frankly, even though McCartney is the most sensible person among the tourists, he started grating on my nerves. There was a certain excess earnestness in this character, and I think the guard that looked at him so long at the checkpoint earlier was wondering if he was looking at Jerry Mathers.
What is odd about this movie is it feels so much like found footage that I keep mistakenly thinking it is of that genre. The only part of the film that is truly of that format is a montage at the beginning where McCartney, Dudley and Kelley en route to Kiev to the tune of “Alright” by Supergrass. Not exactly found footage horror, unless you really hate that song.
I can’t say much more about the plot of Chernobyl Diaries without spoiling any number of surprises, and I would hate to do that to potential viewers. It will have a great number of threats, some more expected than others. But I will say that, if you encounter what looks like a small child in the middle of the night in area where there should be no people, you should not attempt to approach it. That seems to me to be as sensible as leaving the lights off inside your crippled van.
Dir: Bradley Parker
Starring Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sadowski, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Dimitri Diatchenko, Devin Kelley, Nathan Phillips, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal
Watched on blu-ray