Throughout the month of April, Murder Made Fiction has been examining films on the theme of ‘Whistleblowers’, including Silkwood (listen), Erin Brockovich (listen), and Dark Waters (listen).
At the same time, on Patreon, we’ve been discussing Nuclear Disasters, focusing primarily on Craig Mazin‘s five-part limited series Chernobyl, as well as two films chronicling the near-meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan.
Jenn and I have discovered a surprising amount of crossover between the two themes, including discussions about who knew what and when; what could have been done differently to prevent disaster; and the environmental fallout that continues to affect citizens.
Thrown into the mix is Brad Parker‘s delightfully silly Chernobyl Diaries (2012), which has a shocking amount of real-life facts embedded in the narrative. Or at least it does in the film’s more successful first act…before things quickly devolve into a pretty conventional B-movie in the back half.
In the film, a group of tourists goes on an ill-advised “extreme” tour of Pripyat, located in the cordoned off exclusion zone near the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Older brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski) takes the lead in finding guide Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko), while younger brother Chris (Jesse McCartney) has plans to propose to his girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley).
Tagging along is Natalie’s friend – and Paul’s love interest – Amanda (Devin Kelley), as well as international couple Michael (Wolf Creek‘s Nathan Phillips) and Zoe (Cold Prey‘s Ingrid Bolsø Berdal). But after an accident strands them in hostile territory, and with radiation levels spiking, can the group survive a night among the mutated residents living among the ruins of Reactor 4?
Listen to find out!
Want even more Murder Made Fiction? Be sure to check out the pod’s Patreon feed, where Jenn and I have 150 hours of bonus content, including the aforementioned episode-by-episode coverage of HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries, as well as episodes on HBO’s 2026 documentary, Fukushima: Nuclear Nightmare, and the 2020 Japanese fiction film Fukushima50 on the events following the 2011 tsunami.
