10 Terrible Horror Movies With Amazing Concepts

The found footage genre was already feeling plenty tired in 2012, but Chernobyl Diaries at least had a unique, atmospheric setting, with its focus on a group of "extreme tourists" who visit the abandoned city of Pripyat, near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, only to find themselves assailed by the monsters residing there.

With parts of the film actually shot on location in Pripyat, the filmmakers deserve a measure of credit for getting the superficial stuff right, but most everything else? A bust.

Beyond the metronomically predictable jump scares, the abundance of shaky cam borders on nauseating, none of the characters are interesting, and the script is jam-packed with clunky, leaden dialogue. The mere $1 million budget also places a considerable ceiling on the project's effectiveness, given that the marquee CGI moments look quite horrible.

It's incredibly easy to appreciate the potential of a horror film set in the shadow of Chernobyl, but this lazy effort comes off more as a cheap cash-in, and cash-in it certainly did, as it ended up grossing a cool $37.2 million at the box office.