Chernobyl Diaries is a modern Frankenstein, as the unwitting “extreme tourists” venture into an abandoned town in the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor they realize that the mutants which live there are the heartless offspring of their own sick society, a reflection of their need to consume power made material. This is what Chernobyl Diaries could have been, it all starts off well, the abandoned city is suitably spooky and weird and the inevitable dead eyed doll turns up on the floor, its a brilliant setting for a horror movie. From here there are two options, first is to go balls out terrifying, have killer mutant animals and shit turn up and eat the crap out of everyone, maybe one of the cast offs themselves rather than face the horror and at least one should mutate on screen, seem vaguely normal for about five minutes then maybe eat someones ear off. Option two is to make some sort of social commentary about the dangers of nuclear power a la my initial Frankenstein description. This film does neither of these things, choosing instead to take the film away from the spooky abandoned city into the bowels of a nuclear reactor, not that you’d know that it was one because all you see is stair cases, like millions of stair cases, and ends with a sort of incoherent mutant attack underground weird science experiment ending that is excessively less satisfying than watching all the cast get torn to bits by mutant bears. Just for the record, I didn’t count, but I would be willing to bet that they run down more stairs than they go up. Chernobyl Diaries has a few scares, but it could have been a hell of a lot better, and what is frustrating about this is that it had all the ingredients, they have just been mixed up wrong.