Haunted Monkey Paw Island: Ghosts of Chernobyl (2021)

Friday, August 5, 2022

Ghosts of Chernobyl (2021)

Aka After Chernobyl

A Russian guy finds a camera and shares the footage online. It turns out to be video of an American named Kate who traveled to Russia with her brother Tom and a guy named Dave to visit her boyfriend Steve. The first fifteen minutes is mostly the group driving or standing around as they prepare to head back to the US.

While traveling, they get lost. They have no cell reception, gps or map, and the car gets stuck. Then to add to their problems, they wander into the woods at night, someone disappears in a pond, there are ghosts, and they run and hide in Chernobyl.

Kate gets more unlikable with each scene. You start to wonder if maybe she has a Russian boyfriend because no one nearer could stand her. She’s whiny, shouts orders at the others, has a bad attitude, and treats everyone poorly.

No one is familiar with Chernobyl or the city of Pripyat. So not only are they poorly educated, but they have no curiosity about the country they’ve flown half way around the world to visit. When one of the guys says the piles of gas masks and multiple radiation signs must mean something, Kate counters that there are only a few signs. So in Kates mind, the number of radiation signs equates to the level of radiation.

Previously she’d contemplated how strange it is cities and decrepit houses exist at the same time in places that are very different. Where does Kate come from that this is a surprise? Does she live such a sheltered life she’s confused by this?

It’s hard to watch this movie when there are no likable characters. And it’s not clear why Tom and Dave are traveling with Kate. None of them get along. So why did they go on this trip together? Tom is Kate’s brother but who is Dave? And why is Kate, a grown woman, clutching a stuffed animal? And who is the father of Kate’s baby? She whispers to Steve she’s pregnant, but she hasn’t been in Russia that long. Was Steve recently in the US? Kate chugging bourbon in the next scene means either she’s lying or she’s an even worse person than she appears to be.

And what is the relevance of Steve’s brother or Dave’s uncle Josh? Word on the street is Steve’s brother is an asshole. There’s lots of talk of this at the beginning, but it goes nowhere. We never see him or find out why it matters. There is a brief flashback to Dave talking to his uncle Josh in New York. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what is going on.

I don’t know if they had a script, but it doesn’t seem like it. The dialogue sounds like people trying to improvise characters and what they might say, but aren’t adept at it.

And if they were in Russia and heading towards the airport, then how did they end up in Ukraine in Pripyat? They have no idea what Chernobyl is so it’s not like they decided to head to the area to check it out. There was no indication they’d left Russia, and I’m pretty sure Pripyat has a military presence to control who goes into it.

Dialogue from people you won’t like:

I go places no one has gone before.

Kate: this is what they’ve been forcing me to eat for the past two weeks.

Tom: Kate, no one is forcing you to eat that.

Kate: Oh okay then please pass me the menu, dick.

It’s it’s so weird that… like look, see? At the same time we were in the center of the city where there’s like, you know, these huge glass buildings and at the same time there’s like, these little houses that are practically, I don’t know, destroyed. And I don’t know. It’s so different.

I can’t, why? Why? Why this nightmare ever started. I don’t understand. No. First this town. This trip. This fucking radiation’s everywhere. I don’t understand how this happened. I don’t get it.