REVIEW: Is Chernobyl Diaries Offensive? No, It's Just Dumb

The premise of Chernobyl Diaries, in which a group of twentysomething tourists are menaced by malevolent beings while paying a visit to Pripyat, the abandoned Ukrainian town that used to house workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, has been described by some as uncomfortably exploitative of a real-life tragedy. But real-life tragedies bleed through into horror cinema all the time — the genre is frequently a reflection of subconscious dread and anxiety, from the nuclear detonation-born Godzilla menacing a Japan less than a decade after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the monster that attacked New York in Cloverfield, 54 years later, in a wash of imagery reminiscent of 9/11.
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Who's Up For a Latino-Targeted Paranormal Activity?

Besides Paramount, I guess: "The new project will reunite producers Jason Blum and Oren Peli with Christopher Landon, the writer of the second and third installments in the Paranormal franchise. Landon will write and direct the project, described by sources as a 'cousin' to the Paranormal movies but not a sequel, reboot or spinoff. The real kicker is that the movie will be Latino-themed. It will star a Latino cast and will tackle Catholic-based paranormal mythology. It will not, however, be in Spanish. The aim is to make the micro-budgeted movie in the next several months." [THR]

Lionsgate Picks Up Barry Levinson's Found Footage Water Bug Horror Pic The Bay

After directing Al Pacino to a Golden Globe win in last year's You Don't Know Jack, it seems Barry Levinson needed a change of pace -- like, a major 180. And that's how we come to today's news that Levinson's next film, a found footage creature horror called The Bay (working title: Isopod), has been picked up for distribution by Lionsgate.

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