For a film so blatantly designed to be provocative, Bradley Parker’s The Chernobyl Diaries is a shockingly dull affair which squanders the potential of its subject matter in favour of vapid, derivative claptrap.

A group of shiny young Americans staying in Kiev decide to take part in a spot of “extreme tourism” and visit Pripyat, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl power station.

Leader of the pack is arrogant show-off Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), who is accompanied by his sensible younger brother Chris (Jesse McCartney – yes, the early Noughties pop sensation), Chris’s girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Dudley) and the sensible, obviously-going-to-be-the-one-who-lasts-longest Amanda (Devin Kelley). She’s a brunette so we know she’s smart.

Sneakily driven into Pripyat by ex-soldier Uri, the group spends a couple of hours looking around the abandoned town and making devastatingly poignant observations – e.g. “Imagine this place filled with children”. Having done some photo-taking/soul-searching/bear-dodging (seriously) they return to the van to find that it has been tampered with and won’t start. So obviously, instead of doing what real people would do in such a situation (make their way back on foot while it is still light) the gang sit in the van all night. And slowly begin to be picked off. By face-eating radiation monsters.

From the word go, one of the main problems with Parker’s film is that, despite everyone knowing exactly where things are headed – the aforementioned face-eating radiation monsters – the “horror” takes such a long time to kick in that by the time you get there you feel like you’ve been trundling along in the back of Uri’s van for hours, snoozing.

This is also a film that does almost no work on the characterisation, ensuring that it’s virtually impossible to view these people as anything more than well-dressed fleshbags.

The most offensive thing about The Chernobyl Diaries, though, is that it really isn’t that offensive. If you’re going to bother basing your film in Pripyat, why not do something genuinely shocking with it? Yes, you’ve got your lump-headed mutants and your “argh my face/eyes!” radiation poisoning, but is that really it? Are we still doing flesh-eating cannibals? Didn’t The Hills Have Eyes cover all that?

Considering the location Parker and his team had to work with – so well-suited to the genre that you can almost see it as a level on a scary videogame, right after “Haunted Fairground” – it really is surprising how little consideration went into the horror set-pieces. At every turn it’s just silhouettes and creepy mutant children, ragged curtains being drawn back slowly and torches going out in the dark.

In an age where horror is beginning to be about subverting the tropes (see: The Cabin in the Woods and Lovely Molly), Parker’s film churns out a story on energy that was spent years ago. For a film based around a nuclear explosion, The Chernobyl Diaries has about as much bang as a limp balloon.

Released in UK cinemas on Friday 22nd June 2012 by StudioCanal.

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