How did the idea for ‘Chernobyl Diaries’ come about?

Oren Peli: One day I was just goofing around on the internet, and I found this website of this girl who was travelling through Pripyat on a motorcycle. She posted a photo-blog of her journey. That was the first time I came across Prypiat, the city next to Chernobyl, which was basically abandoned overnight and left like a sort of ghost town, printed in time and history, left pretty much unchanged. I just thought that it was extremely fascinating, very sad, and could also be the setting of a very creepy horror movie.

How important was it to capture the look of Prypiat?

Oren Peli: The authenticity of the look of the place was very important for us, because the city of Prypiat is almost like a character of its own, as well as the Chernobyl reactor. So it was very important for us to recreate the look and feel of being in an abandoned city. I think it was the biggest nuclear disaster ever, the actual Chernobyl event, and this town next to it, Prypiat, it housed 50,000 people, the people of Prypiat had to be evacuated overnight, they didn’t have time to take their belongings, so you have this city that is totally abandoned. If you go into an apartment, you’d find peoples personal items, their clothes, their photographs, they never had a chance to take any of that. And unfortunately many people didn’t get out in time. Many people are suffering the effects of the radiation for the rest of their lives.

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