About a month after we learned that its title was officially no longer The Diary Of Lawson Oxford, a trailer has arrived for the newly monikered **Chernobyl Diaries, the latest high-concept horror from Oren "Paranormal Activity" Peli.
What's immediately interesting is that this has been sold all along as a nature-run-amok film, and yet that's not an impression that the trailer gives in any strong sense. The plot involves a group of friends taking an "extreme tourism" trail to the Russian city of Prypiat, once home to the Chernobyl plant workers but abandoned since the nuclear disaster of 1986. Except... it's apparently not so abandoned after all.
Given the number of deaths thought to be attributable to the Chernobyl disaster and its after-effects, we can't quite get past the notion that the film's premise is in questionable taste. But the scares - sudden mysterious child appearance; behind you! etc. - look effectively handled. And empty cities are always undeniably eerie.
It's Peli's name that's all over this, but it was actually directed by Bradley Parker, an FX man with credits on Fight Club and Let Me In. Peli wrote the film with brothers Shane and Carey Van Dyke (grandsons of Dick). And he also produced, under his Paranormal Films banner.
The cast includes Jonathan Sadowski (the 2009 Friday 13th), Devin Kelley (TV's The Chicago Code), Nathan Phillips (Wolf Creek), and singer Jesse McCartney, and The Chernobyl Diaries will be released in the States and some of Europe on May 25. There's no confirmed UK date so far.