A group of friends are on a leisure tour of Europe and looking for adventure. One of the tourist has a reunion with his brother, who wants to really entertain the group by arraigning for a tour guide to take them on a trip to the abandoned city of Pripyat in the Ukrain. It is to be a daring and forbidden trip, for Pripyat is the former home of the workers at Chernobyl. When the radiation disaster at Chernobyl happened, no one had time to grab personal effects; that is those that survived. The group only suspects this will be the trip of their lives. After looking through deserted buildings and keeping track of safe radiation levels, the group find themselves stranded. Now you have a van of tourists in a bad situation quickly getting worse, as there is more than enough reasons to be afraid of what lurks in the ghost city after dark. Filmed in Serbia and Hungary with an obvious small budget. Players in this horror flick: Ingrid Berdal, Jesse McCartney, Dimitri Diatchenko, Olivia Dudley, Jonathan Sadowski and Devin Kelley. Bradley Parker directs.

If you have seen the trailer for Chernobyl Diaries, you will know that four young Americans go on an unofficial tourist excursion to Pribyat, the (supposedly) deserted town which was evacuated suddenly when the neighbouring Chernobyl reactor went up the Swannee. You will also know that Pribyat doesn't appear to be as deserted as it was made out to be, and things go horribly pear-shaped.

The film itself doesn't really give you much more than that, it just gives it to you over a longer period of time. Having seen the trailer, my money was always on radiation-raddled mutant cannibal survivors, but I won't tell you whether I was right or wrong.

This film was co-produced and co-written by Oren Peli and, like his Paranormal Activity films, it subscribes to the theory that less is more. Thus there is a lot of exploring, creeping around derelict unlit buildings, escaping from pursuers who are mainly noises, and the like.

This is a really dark film in terms of not very much light rather than tone, although it is not exactly cheerful. Anyone who has watched more than half a dozen horror films from The Evil Dead onwards will recognise this as a variation of the last-man-standing Cabin In The Woods genre, with a rather different setting.

The ending doesn't really provide the payoff the audience is entitled to.

I read a lot of reviews of horror films, and some people get upset because a film doesn't turn out to be what they wanted it to be, and I think that is going to happen here. On the other hand, I think it turned out to be exactly what it intended to be - a fairly low key, mounting dread, unnamed pursuit kind of movie with an unusual and effective setting.

I'm guessing Jesse McCartney must have had some few weeks with time on his hands and the producers figured his bubblegum popularity might sell a few tickets to this teen scream fest. Maybe he got a real three hour tour of some Russian hot spots, who knows?

McCartney is visiting his brother in Kiev with a new fiancé in hand and brother Jonathan Sadowski who's a bit of a free spirit arranges an unusual tour of the abandoned city near Chernobyl. Can't stay there to long lest the radiation from that famous nuclear disaster get you. Who in his right mind would want to go there and who with a working brain cell would take you?

The second question is Dimitri Diatchenko, the first is Sadowski, McCartney and their women and another couple. He sneaks them into the fenced off area and then Diatchenko's ramshackle tour bus breaks down, forcing out intrepid passengers of this land Minow to spend the night with the wild things as well as the radiation which they've been exposed to well over the legal limit.

The ensemble cast did get through the film without breaking into laughter something of a tribute to them. Chernobyl Diaries is strictly a film for one with indiscriminating tastes in the horror genre.