There's a great idea hiding in there somewhere - shame they didn't find it.

| Jun 24, 2012

For a film with radioactive bears running around, it's often strangely dull, though the final descent into the concrete maw of the reactor itself is memorably hellish.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 22, 2012

There is a scary and surreal appearance by a bear.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 21, 2012

Doesn't set out to reinvent the horror wheel but succeeds as solid genre entertainment.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 21, 2012

Once the annoying, two-dimensional characters start getting bumped off one by one, it's just a relief that the actors have stopped improvising their own banal dialogue.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 19, 2012

My blood ran... tepid, and, truthfully there are few surprises.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 1, 2012

Director Bradley Parker shakes his camera around a lot.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 29, 2012

The real stars of the movie are the tired devices and plot points. They're famous, but they're as old as Betty White: The Guide Is Dead, The Van Won't Start, Her Shirt Has a Plunging Neckline, Don't Go in There.

| Original Score: 1/4 | May 28, 2012

The core concept has the potential to deliver a clever and original horror film, but all we get is the obligatory cheap scare.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 25, 2012

Standard-issue genre accessories (dank stairways, flashlights, overcast skies, frosty windows) abound; shocks are mild and few.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 25, 2012

You might actively root for their collective demise, if you could rouse yourself to care one way or the other. Go gallivanting in Chernobyl and you get what you pay for, nimrods.

| May 25, 2012

First-time director Bradley Parker (working from a script co-written by Paranormal Activity creator Oren Peli) understands that suggesting is scarier than showing, and confusion generates more suspense than explanations do.

| May 25, 2012

With the faux-verit aesthetics of [Rec], the American-tourists-in-Eastern-European-hell setup of Hostel, and the brain of a mushy radioactive mutant zombie thingie, Chernobyl Diaries is little more than decomposed horror leftovers.

| Original Score: .5/4 | May 25, 2012

The lack of suspense and surprise in this dispiritingly rote film becomes its own form of contamination.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 25, 2012

A run-of-the-mill low-budget flick focused on killing off stupid, pretty young things slowly enough to fill out 90 minutes.

| Original Score: 4/10 | May 25, 2012

This is a standard-issue slasher movie without much slashing, substituting the Chernobyl-workers' ghost town of Pripyat for the likes of Friday the 13th's Camp Crystal Lake.

| Original Score: 3/10 | May 25, 2012

Well-paced direction from first-timer Bradley Parker layers on the tension and tosses in some worthy scares.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 25, 2012

A basic monster movie that benefits greatly from its unique setting, Chernobyl Diaries again demonstrates Oren Peli's ability to wrest scares with minimal production values and a clever premise.

| May 25, 2012

Scattered stretches of suspense and a few undeniably potent shocks are not enough to dissipate the sense of deja vu that prevails throughout Chernobyl Diaries.

Full Review | May 25, 2012

It takes a good hour for one of the leads to suggest that "we need to be smart about this." You want to be smart? Don't take an unauthorized tour of a nuclear disaster site.

| May 25, 2012