As an avid horror movie fan, I'll admit that it impresses me when a film is able to make me actually pause breathing for a split second, or make me clench back in my seat. I give credit to this film for being able to do it twice, which is more than I can say for Paranormal Activity, The Hills have Eyes etc. With that being said, the story did focus on a part of history which I'm very much interested in and this might mean I've rated the film more highly than people who came to see a general horror flick.
The film centres around a bunch of people illegally going to Chernobyl to explore the area affected by the nuclear disaster, before things go drastically wrong and the tried and tested system of people being plucked away is in motion. The film benefits from being mostly in darkness as it helps the jumpy aspects of some of the shock-moments, as well as the eerie music and camera-work which kept me on my toes throughout. As with most horror films, the major failure of this for me was to produce a storyline past the generic "people get attacked/killed by a mysterious thing(s)", instead following the trend and making me struggle to care about who died. The one thing I will comment on is that there is a good swerve at the end of the film which will throw you off guard, but by then you've already seen too much destruction and any hope of a happy ending is virtually impossible.
If this film had lasted twenty minutes longer and had used that time to contain some more structure of a plot, I would have enjoyed it almost twice as much as I did, but I did enjoy it anyway. Would recommend for anyone who is a avid horror junkie looking for something sort of new in terms of the "bad guys", as well as an interesting take on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster.
The film centres around a bunch of people illegally going to Chernobyl to explore the area affected by the nuclear disaster, before things go drastically wrong and the tried and tested system of people being plucked away is in motion. The film benefits from being mostly in darkness as it helps the jumpy aspects of some of the shock-moments, as well as the eerie music and camera-work which kept me on my toes throughout. As with most horror films, the major failure of this for me was to produce a storyline past the generic "people get attacked/killed by a mysterious thing(s)", instead following the trend and making me struggle to care about who died. The one thing I will comment on is that there is a good swerve at the end of the film which will throw you off guard, but by then you've already seen too much destruction and any hope of a happy ending is virtually impossible.
If this film had lasted twenty minutes longer and had used that time to contain some more structure of a plot, I would have enjoyed it almost twice as much as I did, but I did enjoy it anyway. Would recommend for anyone who is a avid horror junkie looking for something sort of new in terms of the "bad guys", as well as an interesting take on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster.