Editorials
[Closer to Death] ‘Chernobyl Diaries’ and The Death Zone
In the Oren Peli produced Chernobyl Diaries a pack of resident mutants deformed from the radioactive fallout of the Chernobyl accident hunt down and prey upon a group of tourists who become stranded in an abandoned city. While first impressions make this seem to be your average survival horror film relying on exaggerated history and jump scares, the reality of what happened back on April 26, 1986, was much more horrible and deadly.
Join us as we take a quick look back in time at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, and some of the horrible effects that came from a radiation spill 100 times worse than the nuke that poisoned Hiroshima – and get a full head of knowledge for what Chernobyl Diaries is basing their semi-fictional legend upon.
As briefly explained in the 60 second spot trailer, Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor #4 exploded during routine testing, suffering a massive meltdown that is to this day the worst radioactive disaster in history.
The initial flames and heat drew fire fighters to their unforeseen deaths. In deadly radioactive conditions that would dismantle a human body after 40 minutes of exposure, men dropped where they stood, bleeding from their orifices, defecating and vomiting their liquified innards.
Other first responders – the first of the clean-up crews brought in (known as Liquidators) – shoveled most of the radioactive debris released from the explosion back into the core. Nearly all of them would soon after perish.
The following two videos here show a breakdown of what happened when the explosion took place, and inside footage taken by Russian photographer Vladimir Shevchenko, who sacrificed his life, along with the others he filmed, in order to be there, clean up, and get the footage. The men you see in this video are ghosts. Even the camera itself, the one used to record the footage you’re about to watch, had to be buried along with the other debris from the site it became so soaked with lethal radiation.
Due to the fact that the entire event took place under the Communist regime of the former Soviet Union – the statistics as to just how many people were actually killed in the immediate aftermath and the years to follow are sketchy. But some facts are indisputable.
Dozens of towns and cities were wiped off the map and are to this day uninhabitable. Perhaps the most astounding piece of information is that the estimated deaths range anywhere from 60 to 100,000 as a result of the blast and or radiation, depending on who you ask. Also – the circa 7,000,000 lives that were plagued with severe health problems, ranging from birth defects to lowered intelligence to weakened immune systems.
– In April 1994, a commemoration text from the Ukrainian embassy in Belgium counted 25,000 dead among the liquidators since 1986.
– According to Georgy Lepnin, a Belarusian physician who worked on reactor #4, “approximately 100,000 liquidators are now dead”, of a total number of one million workers.
– According to Vyacheslav Grishin of the Chernobyl Union, the main organization of liquidators, “25,000 of the Russian liquidators are dead and 70,000 disabled, about the same in Ukraine, and 10,000 dead in Belarus and 25,000 disabled”, which makes a total of 60,000 dead (10% of the 600 000, liquidators) and 165,000 disabled.
– A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. – Wikipedia
There are certain leaders that would have you believe that the radiation that poured over Europe had no effect on its citizens, or its children. But birth defects and mutations were widespread, and more condensed the closer you pin the map to Chernobyl.
The last video is an explicit, stark and clear vision into the world of those living under the veil of Chernobyl’s radiation poisoning. Its perhaps the most insightful video as to what people are living with as a result of the horror that really took place.
In another documentary not shown here, a Russian native from the area brought up the most sobering statement. This is just one power plant. There are about 500 plants operating across the world today. Each one of them is a massive deadly threat to future generations – including the ill promise of mutating defects that would occur for years after.
Chernobyl Diaries may not be a true story, but perhaps its not as far from the realm of possibilities as we first thought.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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