Diaries repeats every bad trick in the book

Columnist and film writer

Thursday 21 June 2012

Chernobyl Diaries (15)

NUCLEAR FALLOUT: Youngsters -- predictably -- ignore all reason and visit a toxic town deserted since the Chernobyl disaster, in director Bradley Parker's debut, which at least has a few moments of brilliance.

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Cliched directorial debut has too few surpises, says Alison Rowat

Dir: Bradley Parker

With: Jesse McCartney, Olivia Dudley, Jonathan Sadowski

Running time: 87 minutes

DESPITE the silly amount of money it makes from them, cinema is awfully mean to young people. When not portraying them as hoodies you'd not want to hug (Ben Drew's recent Ill Manors), or callow and sex-obsessed (American Pie and every other teen comedy), film-makers like nothing more than taking a group of youthful sorts and scaring the skinny jeans off them.

What have they ever done to us, apart from being young, adventurous, good-looking and not weighed down by responsibilities? Come to think of it, they deserve all they get.Chernobyl Diaries, as the title suggests, is not a cheery skip through the meadows of early twentysomething japes and scrapes. It's a horror-thriller that, as the posters declare with all the subtlety of a four-minute warning, comes to you from the creator of Paranormal Activity, the phenomenally successful things-that-go-bump-in-the-night franchise. Oren Peli is indeed the storymaster behind Chernobyl Diaries, but the directing duties go to Bradley Parker. The former visual effects man on Fight Club and Let Me In is here making his directorial debut, and it shows. Though he puts on an impressive display at times, it's not enough to disguise the thinness of the story.Three young Americans are "doing" Europe. The party stops off in Kiev, where one of them has a brother. Relations between Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) and Chris (Jesse McCartney) are loving but strained, owing to Chris being a cautious type and Paul a fun-loving rebel (hence why he is living in Kiev).Paul has promised to give the group an insider's tour of Moscow, but then he has a better idea. He's heard of this "extreme tourism" trip that takes punters to Pripyat, a town near Chernobyl. Abandoned after the nuclear reactor exploded, Pripyat is now a ghost town.Naturally, someone raises an objection to going on the grounds of radiation poisoning, but Paul assures them that it's OK since they won't be there that long. Paul, as you will have guessed by now, is something of a novice in the ways of radioactive contamination. Rather than running a two-minute mile in the opposite direction, the youngsters troop off to Pripyat faster than you can say "This is the most ridiculous movie idea since Garfield 2". Joining them are a young couple and a Russian ex-special forces type acting as a tour guide.There are certain rules such youth-in-peril films must follow, and Chernobyl Diaries sticks to them like sand to sandwiches. Chief among these rules is the "contradict your most basic instinct" diktat, whereby apparently rational people walk into darkened cellars or go in search of an explanation for a mysterious noise. Here, the rule is flouted in the first ten minutes when the bunch go to Pripyat in the first place. Still, Parker keeps the young cast and the audience on their toes for longer than you might imagine given such a shaky start, and he has the odd flash of inspiration that makes you wonder if there are not more surprises lying in wait. He deserves a thumbs up, too, for operating equal opportunity terror. When the group unwisely split up – another youth horror rule – there is a female character (Devin Kelley) in the lead posse.All these rules were exploited to delightful effect in Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon's recent The Cabin In The Woods. Taking every chiller thriller cliché in the book and giving it a fresh spin, Goddard and Whedon showed there's life in the horror movie yet, as long as the film-makers bring a sense of humour and a wickedly inventive imagination to the party. One instance aside, Chernobyl Diaries is lacking in laughs and ingenuity. It is content to stick to the script laid out in countless movies before.That, for fans of the genre, is part of the appeal. Half the magic of such mystery tours is knowing exactly where the film is headed and how it will get there. Those of an age to match the film's 15 certificate might not have walked this way before, or are not yet tired of doing so. Cynical oldies, meanwhile, can have fun mocking youngsters' concept of holidays from hell. Coming soon: September Weekend In Blackpool Diaries.

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Diaries repeats every bad trick in the book

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