Chernobyl Diaries

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3030395&pagenumber=383&perpage=40#post416074216

I wrote a couple posts about it in the old Gen. Chat thread:

"Chernobyl Diaries is actually one of the better films I've seen this year. It's not an uncompromised revelation like Area 407, but it's a good one - very similar in theme and tone to The Ruins, for fans of that film (like me). I was mildly disconcerted by the rather theatrical acting in the first half (before the screaming starts), but that can be read as a positive trait. The kids look and act like they're in a commercial for coffee, or life insurance. As in The Ruins, this will change. It's all about the inevitability of decay, and it's really effective. It's very Texas Chainsaw.

The objections some people have are understandable. The plot is generic, and the acting takes some getting used to, as noted. The film is also loaded with redundant or unnecessary exposition, which betrays a lack of faith in the audience (my one major gripe). But as I'd expected, folks overlooked the cinematography. It's really great cinematography, approximating the style of Children of Men. The handheld camera will often float around the characters before lingering on some interesting tableau. This creates some good tension between the POVs of the cameraman and the characters, while also seamlessly bridging them. The film is remarkably good at drawing tension from frames-within-frames, like empty doorways and clouded windows. It frequently just looks great. Perhaps it's too naturalistic for its own good, because they pull off some really neat stuff.

Why it's a good film: there's a lengthy, slowly-paced montage of the characters silently experiencing their environments, and documenting them.

The special effects are flawless, but also not at all show-offy. This is post-spectacular cinema, in the style of Battle: Los Angeles, where everything is presented matter-of-factly and you don't get any 'money shots' of the monsters posing. And about the monsters: I liked them. They're not 'scary', no. People have complained about that, but they don't appreciate the nuance. With their rubbery makeup and clumsiness, they approach Zaat's mixture of pity and revulsion towards a mutated creature. It's exploitative of the tragedy, yes - but very self-conciously about that exploitation. These are vengeful ghosts from a disaster reduced to a historical trivia and a cool thing you may have seen on the internet. That it feels skeevier than countless pop-cult stuff about nazi experiments is a testament to its success. Consider it a response to that video game. It's the important distinction between mere fodder to be killed and humans reduced to inhumanity, as covered in Peter Jackson's films. You can almost hear them lament how they've been reduced to movie mutants. But consider how easy it would have been to make them 'cool' mutants, and you can admire the restraint of making them appear almost fragile.

I liked how they subvert the 'glimpse of the monster in a photo' scene by having that information be totally useless to the characters and irrelevant to the plot. I like how it opens with an iPad screen and closes with a metal shutter covering a darkened window. I like the understated moment where these young photographers find find a destroyed photograph lying in the dirt and then forget about it (again, with no relevance to the plot).

In general, the film is just plain bleak and discomfiting. It's not discovered-footage, but obviously borrows a lot from that style. There's barely any score, and the takes are looong, lingering on 'empty' spaces. The shot choices are often very unconventional, playing with the lightweight camera like a subdued Crank. The production design is utterly fantastic as well, and it's all subtle and downbeat. Everything Bordwell wrote about Paranormal Activity [...] applies here, although in a film that's significantly better. They use the aesthetic to smuggle a lot of art-film in there. The film isn't as bold and confident as Area 407, but I'd still rank it higher than many on my 'runners up' list for last year.

[...]

It's a generic horror plot retold with extreme subtlety and understatement. Like you don't even realize, til the end, how it effortlessly shifted between protagonists. You don't get the subtextual importance of the one girl having trouble walking with heels on cobblestone. That just hit me now.

It seems condescending to say it's a film that rewards attention, because I'm sure folks paid attention. More accurately, it's a film without any of the usual conventional payoffs, so it's only rewarding for people willing to put up with that. There are no 'holy shit!' moments whatsoever.

It's just a sad, quiet film about how everyone you love will die and there's little you can do about it but try and forget. It's my kind of film because I'm a firm believer that cinema exists at the point where mere plot description fails to be adequate. Plot provides structure and context, but the little details are what's vital to me. Wikipedia isn't going to note the part where the girl has trouble walking in heels. It's not going to note the part where she just stands there and feels the world around her. And it's not going to cover the gradual, satisfying realization that [spoiler]she was the protagonist all along.[/spoiler]

Nuance is more vital than complexity, which is why I love Area 407."