So, being a fair man, I have to give them props for, at the very least, getting the tone of the setting down. Giving it that abandoned, isolated feel that is essential for a film like this. So I think this movie, in terms of setting at least, does a good enough job with its setting.
Or, at the very least, to convince regular people that, in fact, it MAY have been shot there, even though they wouldn't have. So you have to find a place that's similar enough to go to.
This isn't possible, however, because Pripyat, the town the movie takes place in which is, of course, abandoned as a result of the radiation leaks in Chernobyl, still has nuclear dust floating around. And perhaps that's, maybe, because it's still a relatively sensitive topic to those that experienced and, if you wanna be authentic, you're at least gonna have to Ukraine to give you the permits to shoot there. And that's a shame because, as far I can tell, there haven't been many horror movies surrounding this nuclear disaster. That, in and of itself, sounds considerably creepier than this movie ended up being. Even if there's nothing supernatural about it, it's just a strange vibe seeing a place that used to be teeming with life becoming, essentially, a ghost town. And why wouldn't they? Somehow, seeing the abandoned buildings, still stuck in time, and that Ferris wheel and just knowing what happened and how the people there, pretty much, left almost all of their belongings behind, gives it a really creepy vibe. And the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is a pretty famous one so, I'm certain, plenty of YouTubers have made videos on it. I feel that the same could be said about this movie. I remember, in a review for The Villisca Axe House, that a video on YouTube based on the real-life case would have provided more horror and/or scares than that movie provided. And, honestly, as I sit here and I look back on this film, that is probably one of the very few things positive that I can say about this movie. I think it does a good job at drawing you into its world with its, somewhat, documentary-esque look. Having said that, though, for some reason, despite not being a found footage movie, I do like the look of this film. That's neither here nor there, I suppose. That's a movie that, when I think of the genre, I immediately point to as proof of what the genre can be if handled with skill. Rec is a tremendous found footage movie and, also, one of my favorite horror movies of all time. That the found footage genre inspires some laziness within some particularly unskilled filmmakers is not to be denied, but it has also been used to create some of the more effective horror movies of the last decade, at least in my opinion. Much like every other subgenre within horror, it has its good, its bad and a lot that's in the middle. As I've made clear throughout the years, I'm not a 'hater' of the found footage genre. Much to my surprise, however, this isn't a found footage film at all. The trailers never made that clear, of course, but I came to the assumption that it was based on the way it looked and how everything was shot. I don't know why, for the longest time, I thought that this was a found footage movie.