The biggest fault I can find with horror films is that their premises all too often fail to sustain themselves.  For instance, I felt Poltergeist was super scary until we learn that the haunted house was built on top of an old Indian burial ground.  Knowing that absolutely killed the suspense that had developed, turning its second half into an over-amped effects show with minimal suspense.  Too often movies built upon such weak structure cannot help but fail to sustain the excitement and fear with which they begin.  Chernobyl Diaries shares the same fate.

I think the premise is terrific: six young tourists (four Americans, two Dutch) take an “extreme tourism” jaunt to the Russian town of Pripyat, as close to the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident as is possible without becoming contaminated with radiation.  Once there, the three couples find it very difficult to leave, and they do not understand why.  Over the next two days their number dwindles as they are ruthlessly hunted and killed.

Radiation has been blamed for lots of awakened prehistoric monsters (beginning with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in 1953) and rampaging mutant animals (beginning with Them! in 1954), and, of course, plenty of human mutation in movies in the decades since.  Chernobyl Diaries feeds on this fear and, especially once the people cannot safely leave Pripyat, depends on our imaginations of nuclear nightmare creatures lurking in the shadows.  All this works, but the film never provides a visual payoff.  At some point our imaginations are not enough — at least, mine wasn’t.  I needed to see just what the radiation had produced.  We never really do.

I respect Brad Parker’s movie (based on a story by Oren Peli, the Paranormal Activity guru), but it fails to sustain its suspense because we (and the characters being hunted) never really see what is after them.  Theoretically this could be even scarier than seeing phony-looking mutant make-up, but it didn’t work that way for me.  The premise virtually demands that we witness the Chernobyl demons for ourselves.  It’s too bad.  This could have been a horror classic.  ☆ ☆.  5 June 2012.