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Jonathan Sadowski and Devin Kelley in Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

Goofs

Chernobyl Diaries

Edit

Continuity

When the characters are trying to escape the building and they get to the glass door Michael hands Amanda the tire iron. After trying to break the glass with the chair Michael takes the tire iron back from Amanda. Right after Michael breaks the glass with the tire iron Amanda and Paul are shown flinching away form the breaking glass and Amanda is still holding the tire iron.
While searching for Uri, Michael, Paul and Amanda follow a drag trail into an abandoned building. The trail disappears completely from the dusty ground while they are in the kitchen talking, only to reappear in the next shot when they resume the search.
(at around 13 mins) When everyone is in the van, Michael has his stocking hat on, then off, then on again in just a few seconds.

Factual errors

When the subtitles indicate Uri is speaking Russian, he is actually speaking Ukrainian.
There is one nearly completed and one barely started cooling tower that was to be used for Units 5 and 6 of Chernobyl. The movie shows 3 or 4 completed cooling towers, which is not correct.

Revealing mistakes

The Ferris wheel presented in the movie is smaller and it has fewer cars than the one in Pripyat; the one in the movie has 13 cars, while the Ferris wheel in Pripyat has 20 cars.
Uri takes them to a secret entrance of Pripyat, but he leaves the entrance barriers open, so anyone could easily realize that someone entered Pripyat from there.

Miscellaneous

The group cancels a trip to Moscow in order to go to Pripyat, and treat the change casually, as if Moscow were also just a day trip. But Moscow is a 10 hour drive from Kiev, and they would certainly either fly or take a train there. If so they would have tickets purchased in advance; and also given the distance, they likely booked a hotel for one or more nights. This change of plan could majorly throw off the rest of the trip, and cause cancellations of non-refundable bookings, which no one even considers when deciding on Pripyat. In addition, Americans require visas to visit Russia, which must be applied for in advance. Of course the group may still have Russia on their itinerary and therefore wouldn't waste a costly visa, but changing their travel plans and entering on a different date and potentially in a different city may compromise those visas.

Crew or equipment visible

At the 1:07 mark when the group of survivors are being chased, they run down a flight of stairs. They then start trying to open a locked door and one man in the group turns around and points a gun up the stairs. On the left side of the screen (actor's right side) ,the camera man that filmed them coming down the stairs can be seen holding a camera and trying to back out of the shot.
When the group enters one of buildings, the red light on the crew camera reflects in glass doors.

Errors in geography

At the beginning in Kiev (Ukraine), they enter an agency to find Uri and on the street behind them is a truck that says "Telekom Srbija", which is the largest telecommunications company in Serbia.
The power plant is shown as being located very close to the town of Pripyat and visible in plain sight. In reality there's a distance of roughly 4 kilometers (2,5 miles) to the reactor from the closest buildings that visitors are allowed in. Also, almost everything but the uppermost parts of the buildings and the chimney of the plant is obscured by the vast forest southeast of Pripyat even when viewed from the tallest building in town.
Checkpoint Benivka is on the very edge of Pripyat, and not 20 kilometers from it.
When the group is in London in the beginning of the film, Amanda say's they're at the Tower of London. But if you look behind her, you can clearly see that it is not the Tower of London but in fact Tower Bridge.

Plot holes

The soldiers told the group Pripyat was closed for maintenance, which the group took to mean they would have the place to themselves, but which more logically would mean they'd be caught by maintenance workers. And when they heard noises they thought might be other people--both in the housing buildings and outside the van, they never suspected it might be the fabled maintenance workers.
As the group of remaining tourists are running about in the ruins of Pripyat, there is one scene where they see what looks like a ghostly little girl in the distance, before they turn around for a moment and look back only to see several mutated humans chasing after them. Given that there's no indication of the supernatural in this film, as it had been grounded in reality until that point, there's no explanation for who that girl was, and she never appears again.

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Jonathan Sadowski and Devin Kelley in Chernobyl Diaries (2012)
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