Mysterious Island

Minding Nemo

Mysterious Island
UK 1961
Directed by Cy Endfield
Columbia/Impact Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: All the mysterious spoilers on this one.

So Mysterious Island is based on the novel of a similar name... my favourite of Jules Verne’s novels, The Mysterious Island. I first heard of it by reading a Marvel Classics comic when I was a youngster and was fascinated by it, especially the twist towards the end. It was long before I caught up with this version on television (I guess I would have watched it in on a black and white set in the 1970s) and I like to revisit this movie in particular every now and again for a few reasons. One is that it’s easily the most entertaining production of this ‘adaptation’. Two is that it’s got an absolutely fantastic, somewhat blistering, driven score by Bernard Herrmann and thirdly, because the last adaptation of this I saw, as a Columbia serial, also heavily featured the queen of an alien race and her cohorts wearing left over costumes from serials like Flash Gordon (reviewed here) and Buck Rogers (reviewed here), chasing the various protagonists around said island for a lot of the running time and, frankly, that’s about as far from the book as you could get.

That being said, this is in many ways just as bad in terms of taking huge liberties with the original text and, truth be told, I’ve never myself seen a straight version of this done properly. The obvious differences here being: Well, there are no women in the book that I can recall but, in this one, two female characters are inexplicably washed up on the beach to join the main characters in a random shipwreck. This seems to happen a lot with adaptations of Jules Verne’s works, I’ve noticed, since they rarely have any major female characters and, for some reason, movie studios insist on putting them in anyway. So they completely screw themselves in the ‘accurate adaptation’ department before they’ve even started. Secondly... there’s no pet dog in this and the four legged character is sorely missed, in my opinion. 

Thirdly, well... it’s a Schneer and Harryhausen production and Ray needs something to animate so, the ‘mysterious’ benefactor of the island (I’ll get to him in a minute) is working on solving mankind’s hunger problems by having figured out how to make crops and animals grow to huge size (the science here is not elabourated on). So we have a giant crab, giant turkey-like bird, giant bee and giant octopus for some of the characters to fight here. Interestingly for a film utilising the genius of Ray Harryhausen, the crab used is a real crab, gutted and with armatures fitted inside it, rather than a rubber model. 

Okay, so the film starts off strongly with Herrmann’s powerful score crashing in over the Columbia logo before his music gets full on broody as the various credits rise against a moving backdrop of the sea (and you can hear it behind the music too), the various shots of the sea tinted yellow, then purple, then blue and then back to yellow again... constantly cycling between various colours as the credits are raised. And it’s during these credits that we have the films first big clunker of a mistake. A total spoiler... I’ll get back to it in a second.

The plot is about five prisoners (actually, four union army prisoners and one confederate captor) escaping gaol during the siege of Richmond, Virginia in 1865. They take a hot air balloon but circumstances are such that they wash up on a deserted island and have to survive. Strange things... no, mysterious things... happen to them. The captain is washed up separately and unconscious but a fire has been lit where he can be found by the others. Some vine creepers are left by the entrance to two caves in a cliff wall, allowing access. The giant turkey thing is shot from afar, saving the lives of some of the crew. A chest of useful implements such as rifles, ammunition, a compass, charts, a sextant, tools, pots n’ pans, a telescope and a copy of Robinson Crusoe conveniently washes up on shore at a convenient point. And a pirate ship which places the lives of the escaped survivors in peril is mysteriously blown up from beneath with an explosive charge. The whole mystery of the original book comes from trying to figure out who the survivors’ mysterious benefactor is. And it’s wonderful... at least in the book.

But let’s go back to those opening credits because, this is where things get silly. There’s a huge spoiler in them because, instead of just listing Herbert Lom as being among the cast, the studio decide to list the credit thusly: “Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo”. Yeah, so that blows, right out of the water, the mystery of the helping hand being Captain Nemo and the surviving remnant of the Nautilus submarine from the earlier Jules Verne adventure yarn 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (Columbia wanted James Mason from the 1950s version to play Nemo again here but, alas, that didn’t happen). 

Luckily, Lom, along with all the other principal actors consisting of Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan, Gary Merrill, Beth Logan, Percy Herbert and Dan Jackson... are all brilliant in this and, even though the twist is revealed on that opening credit, the film is hugely watchable and entertaining without being forewarned. Although, just to compound their error, in this version, it’s revealed the rifles in the chest are engraved with the word Nautilus... just in case we forgot the whole “it’s Captain Nemo folks’ vibe of the, well, not so Mysterious now Island. 

There’s still a little suspense left though, as Nemo warns his new companions that the volcano on the island is due to destroy it in two days or less. Can they all work together to find a way off the island before they are burned to a cinder? You can probably guess which characters survive and which one doesn’t, I suspect. 

And that’s me done with Mysterious Island for a while. Always a pleasure to watch this one and, although there’s not a huge amount of Harryhausen’s trademark animation in it, it’s still a greatly entertaining movie, even if they do go out of their way to advertise the twist in both their credits and, preposterously, on the original cinema trailers for the film too. I’m glad that, when I was a lot younger than I am now, Marvel Comics at least didn’t advertise the twist ahead of schedule. Still, if you’re going to see a cinematic version of Mysterious Island, this is certainly among the more fun ones, even if it continues the tradition of being completely inaccurate to the original novel.

Extinction

Harmony Heir's Prey

Extinction
Spain/USA/Hungary/France 2015
Directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas
Sony Region 2 DVD

Warning: Very mild spoilers... which you’ll almost certainly see coming, anyway.

Okay... this is another one I got into through the music because Varese Sarabande released the score by Sergio Moure towards the end of last year. So I waited for it to hit the cinemas over here and, of course, after a while I found out that not only hadn’t it got a big screen release in the UK, it was already on bargain bucket DVD on Amazon. So, yeah, finally got to see the movie that the cool music went with and... I was not disappointed.

Based on the novel Y Pese A Todo by Juan de Dios Garduño, who also co-wrote the screenplay, Extinction tells the story of a few surviving people after a couple of apocalyptic events hit worldwide, one of which is akin to a zombie virus. So, yeah, this is very much an I Am Legend variant in some ways. It’s got not so great word of mouth or critical celebration, it seems to me, but having watched it I have to say, it’s one of the more interesting little horror films that we’ve had released over here recently (albeit on a ‘straight to home video’ format in this country) and I really don’t think it deserves the attention, or lack thereof, that it’s been getting.

Like most good zombie films, there is no reveal as to how the zombie virus got started and we start off with a strong opening scene as civilians are being escorted by the military on a couple of buses. On that bus are Patrick (played by Matthew Fox), Jack (played by Jeffrey Donovan), Emma (played by Valeria Vereau) and Emma’s tiny baby Lu. Any fan of horror films knows a military escort on two buses with a couple of armed guards on board to protect the passengers is bound to go wrong and, as you might expect, it’s not long before the military escort are picked off and infected by flesh chomping undead and the passengers are on their own and fighting for their lives...

We then cut to nine years later and the sleepy village of Harmony.

I say sleepy village because it now has a population of only three people... Jack and Lu, who survived the bus attack from the opening sequence and, in a separate compound, Patrick and his faithful Welsh Border Collie, known as... um... dog. Good a name as any, I guess. I suppose that's four survivors, then, if you count Patrick's four legged friend. It’s clear something has happened between Jack and Patrick so that they are estranged in this manner and, although you think you can probably guess exactly what that is after you’ve seen the full, opening sequence... it’s actually not quite that variation of the events that you think must have happened. It all amounts to the same thing, though, and you’ll see that play out in one of many flashbacks as the movie continues on its, pretty interesting, path.

One thing is for sure, though, and that’s the cold and snow which these last three survivors are living in. And that’s where the existence of a second apocalyptic event is revealed to the audience. The Earth somehow managed to have a ‘big freeze’ and this, effectively, second ice age (well, it snows a bit but I guess you could define it as that) is what killed off all the zombies all those years ago. Although this doesn’t stop Jack and Patrick taking every precaution just in case, you know, someday the zombies return. Which you know they’re going to, right? Except... maybe not in the form you would expect.

It’s very much a character driven piece and the writers and directors take time to let the actors fill out their roles and allow them to live in the audience’s mind before the inevitable rug-pulling scenes kick in. Lu is now nine years old and so Jack is taking all his time educating her, worrying about her and attempting to keep her out of trouble... overcompensating for disaster in her upbringing a lot due to his own experiences. The nine year old version of the character is played by a young actress called Quinn McColgan and, it has to be said, she does amazing work in this role. The unkempt Patrick, on the other hand, keeps himself from going insane by hunting for food and by broadcasting a radio show every day... even though he knows he has no listeners. And that’s pretty much where the status quo of the movie is before... the inevitable happens.

Yes, it’s not too long before the three protagonists who are heirs to the town of Harmony fall prey to a new threat... or rather the old threat come back in new clothes. The zombies aren’t as extinct as we thought. Rather, in the almost decade that the three main characters have been surviving, the undead have evolved into a new kind of creature. Good news is that their bites aren’t infectious anymore. Once one of them chows down on you, then you won’t turn into another zombie thing... if you survive the experience, that is. Bad news is... they’re blind, albino, bestial creatures who can climb most surfaces and who hunt by sound. Not so hot then.

When an additional, fourth character comes into the mix, played by Clara Logo, and warns of the oncoming pseudo-zombie creatures, things get intense... especially when nine year old Lu is accidentally locked in the basement with at least one of the creatures...

What happens next is something I won’t spoil here but there’s more character building and emotional glue to be attended to in this quite taut story, which has a classic look in terms of the snowy streets and environment these characters inhabit. When you see Patrick with his big beard and his dog riding a snow bike and brandishing a rifle, you can’t help but think of John Carpenter’s classic remake of The Thing or the movie may remind you a little of a George A. Romero zombie movie... but with a little more snow.

The acting is great and Vivas finds a way of bringing even the most pedestrian of scenes to life with a sense of ‘something out there’ and a moving camera which, while at times annoying during some of the hand held scenes, really lends the movie an almost voyeuristic feel that this kind of subject matter really works well with. Sergio Moure’s score adds to the atmosphere when required and certainly helps effectively dramatise the situations through a specific musical palette. It’s also pretty good as a stand alone listen too, obviously, otherwise... you know... I probably wouldn’t have bothered seeking out the film in the first place.

When all is said and done, Extinction is a well crafted and more than competent spin on post-apocalyptic horror/science fiction cinema and true fans of the genre will hopefully like this one a heck of a lot more than the critics obviously did. The relationship between Jack and Patrick isn’t as clichéd and completely obvious as the opening sequence might lead you to believe and, slowly but surely, the film reveals the real way in which events have unfolded over the years and why Jack doesn’t even want Patrick talking to him and Lu, let alone coming near his house. Definitely a solid recommendation from me and, now, I have to leave it there so I can go listen to the score again.

[•REC] 4 aka [•REC] Apocalypse

Ship[•REC]ed

[•REC] 4 aka [•REC] Apocalypse
Spain 2014
Directed by Jaume Balagueró
Entertainment One
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers for all the [•REC] movies occur in this review.

So here we have the fourth in the successful Spanish horror franchise, this time directed as a solo venture by Jaume Balagueró, after his directing partner on the first two movies directed the third entry in the franchise, [•REC] 3 Genesis (reviewed here). According to the Spanish title of the movie as found on the straight to BluRay print released this week, the actual title of this movie on the opening credits is [•REC] 4, so it’s somewhat bemusing that the subtitle which translates this title card reads REC: Apocalypse, for some reason. Maybe the UK marketing people thought we were allergic to numbers although, it becomes quite evident right from the outset of the movie, that this is not in any way a stand alone movie... you need to have seen the previous three to get the most out of this one, for sure.

Like the third movie, which jettisoned the ‘camera eye, found footage’ horror approach after about twenty minutes into that movie, [•REC] 4 makes no attempt to bring us back into that style and is told in third person mode right from the start of the story... although much of the various plot twists do make use of surveillance camera technology and even the ‘found footage’ shot during the first film... so it at least keeps the idea of the titles of these movies going, at least.

This movie is, however, still shot mostly with jerky, hand held footage... the difference being that it is not once shown to be footage from a character’s camera. The camera is very reactive and follows various characters at close range to ensure bringing us into the situations with them but, unusually, chooses to often cut away to master shots and establishing shots, right within the same scenes and at a rapid pace. This style doesn’t in any way jar, though... especially since a lot of the long shots looking on in a more voyeuristic manner are equally jerky in comparison, to ensure that all the footage cross cuts effectively, I expect.

[•REC] 4 starts off towards the end of the first (and therefore also the second and third) part in the timeline, with a small team of soldiers going into the original building, one of whom “rescues” TV reporter Ángela Vidal... played once again with much presence and cuteness by Manuela Velasco. However, you may remember from [•REC] 2 (reviewed here) that, contrary to being killed as was implied by the ending of the original [•REC], Angela is now inhabited by the parasitic creature who lived in the “Medeiros girl”, who started the original ‘Religious virus’... and the film keeps iterating this over and over, even though she says she can’t remember anything about the previous events. After the pre-credits rescue, both her and her rescuer wake up on a ship which is quarantined out at sea. The scientists on the ship are trying to perfect an anti-virus and it becomes clear in the narrative that this is still set only a short time after the events from both the first two films, in the apartment block, and the third movie... as the mother of one of the main protagonists of [•REC] 3 also finds herself on the ship.

As you would expect, the virus gets out of control again and the ship is isolated from outside help, quite deliberately in this case, by the very people who are trapped on board the vessel. Obviously, this enclosed space kind of setting is a bid to go back to the general claustrophobic shenanigans of the first two [•REC] films but, alas, without the “found footage” camera eye and the slow crawl kind of lurking dread found in the first two entries, it doesn’t matter what setting you put the action in... it’s not a scary zombie movie like the original and instead, it’s more in keeping with the common and garden variety of zombie movies which the original entry in this series made such a refreshing change from. So basically it’s a shoot and run picture... but it’s not an unimpressive one, once you accept it for what it is.

The main problem I have is that the trick of this one relies quite heavily and single handedly with the audiences belief that Ángela Vidal is the evil element working against all the other characters but, without wanting to give too much away, it proves to be the undoing of any logic to the film because there is another factor which the audience may or may not be aware of but, in terms of the choices made by Ángela during the movie, her actions prove to be much more consistent with her mental state in one situation and, it turns out, pretty much inconsistent with what is really going on. It’s like the director is deliberately feeding the audience red herring after red herring without worrying that in order to follow these kinds of steps, the character would have to be acting in an entirely illogical manner. So it’s a bit of a problem, for me at least, in terms of character motivation in the way in which Vidal works and interacts in this movie.

All that being said, though, it’s still a really nice little horror piece. Despite it being touted as the last in the series, there is a least a little wriggle room given for a sequel although, it would need to be a complete reset to make that work, methinks. However, in terms of being a nice, standard, formula survival horror movie, it does pretty well. It helps that you care about the characters somewhat and, even though it’s somewhat predictable, it is a genre which can thrive on this kind of repeat variation and it’s shot with a certain style and has a much more, low key and appropriate (though possible not as much fun) musical score than [•REC] 3 supporting it throughout... yeah, we’ve come a long way from the franchise’s roots as found footage, that’s for sure.

For all its faults and successes, I think that overall it’s no better or worse than the third film in the series and that’s still pretty good. It’s such a shame though, that the intense scariness of the first installment and the smart, playfulness of the format of the second installment, have been abandoned in favour of more standard “zombie cinema” attractions in the third and fourth in the series. For anybody who loves the [•REC] films, though, and the horror genre in general, then [•REC] 4 (aka [•REC] Apocalypse) is still a good, solid genre entry and shouldn’t disappoint too many horror fans, I should think. I’d have much preferred it to get a cinema release, like the first two movies did, though... audience reaction in films of this nature are always a good thing to look at.

Silent Hill: Revelation

A History Of Silents

Silent Hill Revelation
France/USA/Canada 2012
Directed by Michael J. Bassett
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: From early on there will be at least one big spoiler lurking in the fog of this review to allow me to discuss the movie properly. You have been duly warned!

The original Silent Hill game was always a dark and scary experience, but just too subtle in terms of game play (not mood) for someone like me to be able to stick with for any length of time (that goes double these days... I can’t remember the last year that I played a console or computer game, too busy writing this blog). I was never a one for survival horror games like this or Resident Evil because they involved stealth and subtlety and, in all honesty, just not enough damn ammo to do what I wanted. I wanted to shoot things in a gory hail of steel tipped ballistic carnage, not sneak around quietly when a zombie (Resident Evil) or newborn baby with a carving knife (Silent Hill in its original pre-censored version) wasn’t looking in my direction. This is why I stuck to first person shooters like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem. Or platformers like Tomb Raider, Lego Star Wars and Lego indiana Jones... the other stuff just wasn’t my cup of freshly ground pixels.

Ironically though, I quite like the movies which are based on these games.

The first Silent Hill movie came out in 2006 and it was actually pretty good. It managed to capture the surreal... oh heck... just ‘plain bugnuts crazy’ atmosphere of the most imaginative evil coming your way to take you to a fate far worse than death, which is consistent with the source material. It starred Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell and ended on a pretty big down note... with Radha Mitchell and the daughter of her character trapped in the alternate reality of Silent Hill while Sean Bean is left in the real, physical world.

And then everyone waited for a sequel...

And they waited...

And they waited...

And then recently there came news of another movie based on the game, this time called Silent Hill: Revelation and I have to say that the publicity that I saw from this made it look like a reboot. Although Sean Bean was touted as being in it, it certainly didn’t look like it was, in any way, a sequel to the first shot at it and even Bean’s character name on the IMDB is different (there’s a fairly good reason for that, which is sorted out within the first ten minutes or so). Since I know this will make a difference to whether people will bother with the new one or not, let me just say that Silent Hill: Revelation is definitely a direct sequel to the 2006 movie... but I would add that, if I hadn’t played the game a little or seen the first movie in the series... I probably would have been a bit lost or at least, would have been less understanding of what was going on in this one.

Silent Hill: Revelation is a film which, because the marketing campaign seems to be a little dishonest, to say the least, doesn’t go out of its way to explain the various elements which make up the town of Silent Hill. It’s got a fairly basic plot, which relies on what is presumably the ‘revelation’ of the title as to the true identity of one of the characters from the first film (although it’s less a revelation and more a “ho-hum, whatever” kind of moment, it seems to me), and you won’t need to be doing much thinking about what’s happening on screen... unless, of course, you are unfamiliar with the dark and twisted territory which is Silent Hill. If anything, the plot kind of resembles the first Transformers movie, but with a mystical symbol replacing the ‘all spark’ of those films.

It’s good that you don’t have to think too much about the plot, though, because Silent Hill almost lives up to its name in that the majority of the running time is almost treated like a silent movie... but, you know, with “scary as ****” sound design. That is to say, once the basic set up is out of the way, the film becomes one long series of extended horror explorations/set pieces folding into each other like a set of Russian dolls. There’s very little let up as you are asked to pay witness to one dark, surrealistic vision after the other and, in some ways, this is the movie’s main flaw. A lot of horror or action directors will realise that to enhance the emotional weight of the action/horror sequences... you need fairly frequent breaks between these kinds of set pieces with which to contrast against. There are a few short breaks between horrors, especially near the start of this movie, but mostly it’s just 'eerie' followed directly by 'spooky', 'bloody' and “what the buggery ****” all piled on top of one another.

There’s no question the film makes you anxious and dread filled for the majority of its running time, and after all that’s what a good horror film tries to do, but I felt that a lot of the scares in this one could have benefitted by a few more scenes of ‘down time’ to make them seem even more potent when they happened. Still, it’s hard to argue that too much when the pacing in this one is so blistering.

The acting is kinda bizarre and wooden in places. I can’t work out if it’s a deliberate ploy by the film makers to echo the typical style of a standard computer game ‘cut scene’, or whether it’s just badly written dialogue in places. There are actually some real, animated sections typical of 'in game' footage shown interacting with the live action at a couple of points in the movie, so maybe that’s why. It’s kind of strange but seems to work in its own way. I just hope the animated sections weren't dropped in because the director didn't have all the footage he needed to make sense of the edit, though.

The girl playing the grown up ‘daughter’ from the first movie, played by an excessively cute actress called Adelaide Clemens, is especially likeable in the role and someone you can easily cheer for when it comes to it. Major acting talents such as Martin Donovan and Malcolm McDowell turn up in what amount to extended cameos and Sean bean has a little more to do in this one. Not loads, but he comes out better than he did in the first movie. Radha Mitchell and Deborah Kara Unger are also back in cameo scenes, reprising their roles from the first film... so you are in good hands most of the way.

The dark twistedness that is a trademark of the series is handled pretty well, including an amazing chase through a stockroom full of dolls where a tremendous CGI’d ‘pseudo-stop-motion’ animation chases the main protagonist around for a bit... although the ‘scary but sexy’ nurses from the first one are neither as sexy or scary as they were the last time around. The big knife guy seems to be treated as a less important player in this one too, although he is still quite intimidating at times. He’s pretty much similar to the big knife guy in the last two Resident Evil movies... so it’s not as effective as it could have been perhaps. I don't know which of these two games used that kind of character first.

The 3D works well in this one, the cinematography is clean (even while roaming designer grunge and decay) and the score by Jeff Danna is as effective as his score for the last one was, again drawing on themes and elements from the series of games on which the films are based. There’s also still the odd nods to sci-fi and horror genre buffs in terms of names used for places which aren’t as blatant as the last film but are still there to bring a smile to the face.

If you want a scary night out at the pictures and you were a fan of the first movie, or if you’ve played some of the games, then Silent Hill: Revelation probably won’t disappoint you too much... if however, you’re not in familiar territory walking those foggy streets, you may want to rent or buy the first movie from 2006 first in order to get a better understanding of the underlying plot references. A good little entry into the series, however, and I hope we don’t have to wait as long for the sequel to appear this time around.

Chernobyl Diaries

Diary Of A Chernobody


Chernobyl Diaries 2012 USA 
Directed by Bradley Parker
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: Mutated spoilers lurking in the
shadows of this review, coming to get you!

Well, after seeing Oren (Paranormal Activity) Peli’s Chernobyl Diaries last night, directed by Bradley Parker, it would be fair to say I am somewhat conflicted by this movie. Conflicted because, frankly, I don’t think it’s a very good film but, perhaps somewhat in contradiction to that, I did find it scary (or at least suspenseful) in that “watching-where-the-heart-pounding-jumps-are-coming-from” way you develop from watching too many horror movies over the years. Unfortunately, despite the elevated heart-rate while viewing, the answer to the whole when are the jumps coming and where from issue is pretty much... exactly where you are expecting them to be.

I was kinda stoked to see this movie because the trailer looks like another one of those found footage movies which maybe deals with “ghosts” from Chernobyl’s past appearing spirit-like to the main heroes... unfortunately, this is not a ghost story at all... and the two best moments of the movie are both already in the trailer.

The film starts off with a group of teenagers, or so I thought, in a montage of what the movie studio thinks are typically “teenage antics while on holiday” shenanigans backtracked with a terrible teeny-bop song and... really... this does nothing to endear you to the characters. Honestly, if this was supposed to make me identify with the group of main protagonists, a bunch of Americans on holiday, then the dumb, witless antics in this opening sequence was really not the way to do it. Seriously people, within five minutes of the start of the opening sequence I just wanted all these kids to die horribly.

I honestly thought from that point on that this movie was going to turn into a demonstration of a list of Stupid Things Teenagers Shouldn’t Do If They Want To Stay Alive In A Survival Horror Movie. And it did too!

You wouldn’t believe the stupidity of the “split up into smaller, helpless divisions” mentality of the main protagonists in this movie. But then it hits you... horror of horrors... the main protagonists are too old to be teenagers or kids! These are supposed to be twenty and thirty-something (judging by the age and looks of the actors) adults thrown into this situation together. Seriously, we are being asked to believe that a group of adults would be this shallow and stupid when faced with these kind of events? I shudder to think that there’s a section of the audience that can identify with the main characters here. It’s depressing. You just want them all to die... and they do.

This movie, plot wise, deals with a bunch of American “kids” (of adult ages) who go on an illegal “extreme tour guide” in the abandoned city which was emergency evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster. The older, strong, ex-military tour guide goes with them and that’s the entire set up. Once there, the escape route is cut off (car parts stolen) and they are left with “what lives” in the dark and abandoned city. It’s a great premise actually, and I would have loved to have seen a better rendition of it than the one I saw last night. Alas, it seems to suffer from every horror movie cliché in the book which, as I’ve said before, is not normally a problem because clichés usually work and can be as effective as anything... and to be fair to this movie, they do. The tension is ratcheted up at every level and it becomes almost a textbook exercise in how to create apprehension and worry in your audience.

Except... even for a horror movie, which are notorious in reputation for being stupidly easy to decode, this one is so blatantly hitting those marks that it becomes tired almost as it starts... and of course, it really doesn’t help if you can’t sympathise with the key protagonists.

For example, you know right from the outset that the “kids” strongest hope for any protection in the movie, the ex-military, self-confident tour guide, is going to be the first one to go so the key team of players are going to be left totally defenceless without any credible means to defend themselves. It’s, as I said, text book horror and excusable... but I’m really getting tired of it now. This tactic will probably work with an audience consisting of teenage “horror virgins” but the kinds of audiences who go to these kind of movies again and again are surely going to be left wanting a more sophisticated execution of the “bugger we’re f***ked” school of suspense? The old ploy of using low rumbles of almost imperceptible base tones on the soundtrack (when the boundaries of music and sound design overlap) to highlight, probably subconsciously to the majority of the audience, when they should be disturbed by some random element that they might not have picked up on with just the visuals alone, is also employed to great effect... but isn’t the fact that I picked up on that myself evidence that the execution of this is just a little heavy handed in this movie?

And then there’s the divide and conquer strategy on show here which I mentioned earlier. The “sinister malevolence” personified by what roams the shadows of Chernobyl already have a recognised modus operandi which manifests itself as them sticking to dark places (yeah, they only come out at night). Why then, do the “kids” in the movie insist on looking for their “taken” or “fallen” comrades during the day in the darkest recesses of the city they can find? Yeah, alright. Don’t shout at me, I know. It’s because that’s where the creatures have obviously taken them to... but come on, this is not how one survives a movie of this nature and leads to an “evade the scarey protagonist scene” directly reminiscent of ones found in such movies as Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and War Of The Worlds, and probably coincidentally, the Russian set The Darkest Hour (another film which I didn’t appreciate on the level at which it was intended).

So I’m really in two schools of thought about this movie because, frankly, it’s a predictable mess which, unlike many horror movies I’ve seen, I won’t be able to sit through again on DVD or any other home video format of the future (and I understand that this movie didn’t have any advanced press screenings, which makes me realise that the studio were less than confident about the kind of critical reception it would receive). On the other hand, the first run through is still a very effective, jump you out of your pants and create worry kind of movie... so if you’re a regular teen audience wanting a heart-leaps-into-mouth time of it, then you’re probably not going to be as disappointed with the general construction of this one as I was... and you might like to give it a go.

I can’t, however, justify giving this movie a recommendation to anyone who has more than a passing interest in scary movies, except perhaps as a tick on your check list of “movies that hit these points” kind of mentality. And even then you might be concerned with the most puzzling question this movie raises , since it is not... extremely jerky, hand-held camera movement aside, one of those found footage movies (no first person here folks... just traditional third person, shaky-cam movie making on show)... which is this...

What diaries? There are no diaries? There’s one piece of recorded footage which goes on for a couple of minutes which plays a part in the main narrative but this is definitely not “fresh from the diary” in nature. And nobody’s writing anything down or recording it in a diary format either. What is up with that title? Never mind Diary Of A Nobody. This movie has no diary at all!