I saw this film in a sneak preview so I did not make the conscious decision to watch this garbage, lest you think me insane. I am going to go into this film far too much and write a far too long review, but it pissed me off so much I need to vent otherwise I might have my own meltdown. There will be swearing. Lots of it.

First of all, what's up with the fucking title? It does not take place in Chernobyl bar the last 5 minutes and there are no diaries there. Not a fucking one! We are not watching a video diary, nobody is writing in a diary, they do not find any diaries. What's up…

I understand a lot of people really hate this film.
I get it, the script is honestly shit there was no effort in that category, the actors were very irritating; they would state the obvious and pull the most impeccable stunts, and the placement isn't even in Chernobyl.

You have a group of friends, two random tourists and a tour guy that is just an idiot. They start heading towards 'Chernobyl' EVEN THOUGH THEY KNOW IT HAS BEEN PRACTICALLY QUARANTINED. But you know dying of radiation poisoning crosses no one's mind, whatsoever.

There were a few jump scares, involving a grizzly bear; which by the way I don't understand...
How did you, Mr. Bear get inside this apartment building, without…

Large headed Leonardo DiCaprio, his girlfriend, his brother, a friend, an ex-Ukranian military guy, a viking, and the guy from Wolf Creek head to Chernobyl for some fun in the radioactive sun. Unfortunately for our group of extreme adventurers, things don't go very well.

Chernobyl Diaries doesn't technically fall into the found footage genre category as none of the characters are doing any filming.. That being said, with the involvement of writer and producer Oren Peli of Paranormal Activity and The River fame, the film is basically just a found footage film that is well shot and devoid of a disembodied voice cutting into the action every few minutes. Personally I enjoyed Chernobyl Diaries for what it is, a funhouse…

Usually for bad films with good premises, I often find myself mentally wandering off and imagining a better movie made out of that premise. I spent most of the time with Chernobyl Diaries pretending I was watching a better film from such a premise.

The whole Chernobyl incident is just a naturally creepy phenomenon, so one would figure a decent horror movie could be made out of it, but instead we get this low effort crap.

I always feel bad for the actors stuck in these kinds of movies. They're usually just desperate for a paycheck and are taking whatever they can get and doing what they need to do to get noticed. They were probably hoping for a hit…

Actually more solid than I expected until the last act, Chernobyl Diaries felt like a Silent Hill video game. Four Americans hit up a one-day 'adventure tour' of Chernobyl before heading on to Moscow. Much like Gilligan's Island, this short tour turns into an extended nightmare.

The film largely avoids 'gimme a break' character decisions, and wisely throws in a few odd throwaway sentences to explain their actions. Example: Why are they following a trail of blood from their missing tour guide into a darkened basement? They don't want to abandon him if he's still alive. Why don't they turn back when they see so much blood they know he's dead? He had a gun which they could definitely use.…

I had a blast with this! The story was simple yet effective and interesting enough to make it all work very well. The atmosphere was good, but considering the location of this film it felt a bit under utilized. I know the actual location of Chernobyl was probably far too vast to capture the entire atmosphere of it so the film makers probably did the best they could. There is some effective suspense along with about 3 big scares and what is going on in this abandoned town is just overall scary. We never get a clear view of the radiation victims, but I was ok with that due to how good not revealing them was done. So, in conclusion,…