Posts tagged Chernobyl Diaries

“Attack of the Chernobyl Zombies”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Chernobyl Diaries is a horror movie that takes place at the site of the 1985 Chernobyl disaster of the meltdown of the nuclear reactor.

And of all the horror movies that take place at the site of a nuclear meltdown, this is one of them.

Would you be surprised if I told you that there were six young people involved in the story?

Paul is an American living in Russia after having had some sort of falling out with his family.

Chris is Paul’s brother, who is traveling in Russia to visit Paul, and with him are Chris’s girlfriend Natalie and Natalie’s best friend, Amanda.

And then there are Michael and Zoe, who are tourists from Australia, and who join the group when Paul arranges an “extreme tour” for him and the others to take.

Paul knows a former Russian soldier named Uri, who is now an extreme tour guide, and Uri is going to take the six young people to visit the abandoned city of Pripyat, which used to be the home of the workers at Chernobyl and their families before the nuclear disaster.

Regarding the abandoned city, Uri tells his clients, “Nature has reclaimed its rightful home.”

Would you be surprised if I told you that the abandoned city is not totally abandoned?

After being turned back at the official checkpoint entrance to the city, Uri drives his van and its passengers around the back to his special entrance.

Uri says that the radiation levels are low enough to be safe now, and besides, they are going to spend only one day inside the city.

Would you be surprised if I told you that they end up spending more than one day there?

Okay, they hear a scary noise inside one of the abandoned buildings, and they see something that Uri says he has never seen before on his previous trips to Pripyat.

Now, would you be surprised if I told you that when they get back to Uri’s van to leave that it won’t start?

Would you be surprised if I told you that when darkness falls, bad things start to happen to seven people one by one?

Chernobyl Diaries could have been called “Attack of the Chernobyl Zombies,” and I’m not surprised that I didn’t find it scary and I didn’t like it, either.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”