Life After: Chernobyl (2016 TV Movie) User Reviews

reality TV disguised as science

[dwaynemayo60 · 2/10 · 24 May 2016]

What can I say? This is NOT what I would call a documentary. No real science or very little. mainly just a cross between ghost hunters, finding bigfoot and Man vs. Wild.

If you're expecting to learn anything here, forget it. I was really disappointed. I almost broke out laughing when they were trying to" call the wolf in".

These are not researchers and apparently not very good TV makers, just a couple of college biologists and a female reporter that got a little TV fame. This thing is a disaster.

Animal Planet must be desperate if this is what they are showing

Too dramatic, false danger and quite cringe-worthy at times

[johanthegrizzlybear · 1/10 · 12 May 2016]

As a big long-time fan of Chernobyl i found it hard to watch this and i would rather see this as some kind of parody instead of documentary.

They are over reacting about everything, over dramatizing natural things and try to fool people to make it look like they are really in danger...

Examples: the part with the wolf showing teeth, ALL wolfs do this, nothing unusual.

When they go to collect leaves, they need no protection at all, i laughed quite hard at this and they stating if you breath it in, you will die instantly (facepalm)... And that very radioactive object in the forest when they run away from it, it's a known object and it's not dangerous and in fact there are plenty of pictures of this object on the internet, nothing they have to " notify to the authority ".

This should be considered as an comedy or parody. People have spent days in the red forest (illegally) and they have no symptoms, they had no protective clothing, they weren't eaten by "aggressive" normal behavior wolfs nor were they killed instantly.

Another comedy NOT to watch about Chernobyl. " ooh it's so dangerous, watch me i'm so cool i could die any second making this movie for you guys at home ooh "

Do not watch this.

[nstroz · 1/10 · 21 November 2018]

If you're interested at all in anything to do with Chernobyl, watch something else. Any documentary you watch about Chernobyl will be better than this.

Do not watch this.

[balintsamu · 1/10 · 8 June 2019]

This movie is a bigger disaster then Chernobyl.

Scientific value: 0 Entertainment value: 0 Cringe value: over 9000

Like if Ghost Hunters went to Chernobyl, but still thought they were hunting ghosts

[muphiekins · 2/10 · 29 May 2018]

This documentary was silly at best. The anthropologist and biologist featured direct much of the focus to the danger they're facing, rather than how life in the Exclusion Zone has changed in the years since the accident. Not to say it's not valuable to state the danger, but rather than stating the danger in a scientific way, they would speak in almost panicked voices about the danger, as if to build up suspense. It really took away from what could have been a good documentary.

In addition to being over-dramatic and under-informative, the documentary doesn't take advantage of the interesting things they do find. For example, when they find the very large catfish and collect its DNA, we are told that the DNA was different from others of that species of catfish. But that's all we are told. We are not told how. Nor are we told why the voles had smaller organs (other than "effects of the radiation")--even if this isn't something that's known at this point, it would be more interesting to explore the mystery.

So, if you want to watch something that's only a couple baby steps above Tanked, I suppose this is the documentary for you.

So cringeworthy bad

[mr-carsten · 2/10 · 16 December 2019]

It is so overdramatic it almost hurts. I have nothing else to add...just bad

Truly dreadful bogus jeopardy

[dvglasgow · 1/10 · 1 May 2020]

I've been to most of the places in this show. I met Ivan Ivanovich.. There's minimal risk, and no secrecy to any of it. Everyone knows where he lives and he is visited regularly by groups of tourists, bringing groceries. Red forest bit was quite interesting, but even that was jumbled, melodramatic, incoherent, bad science.

Not much of a documentary although some shots are nice.

[misha_gsv · 2/10 · 13 June 2016]

This is a documentary which, in my opinion, should not be aired on discovery channel but on something like kids-TV. Everything is over- exaggerated and overly-explained. For example when they are close to some basic animals the lady presenter goes completely nuts with phrases like: "I can not believe I am this close" and "This is unbelievable". These phrases were said when looking at an animal in a cage and a pig walking by. Another thing is that they keep on explaining everything for 2,3,4 times, this gets extremely annoying after some time since I can think of myself that a pig is eating from the ground. Mainly because it is shown on video. The one good thing was the nice shots made by the cameraman and the drone. Especially the shots made by using a drone give a extremely nice overview of the surrounding area.

So to conclude this would be a lovely documentary to show 10 year- old to give them an idea of why people are not living in that area and how the basics of nature work. Definitely NOT something to watch if you are really interested in the long-term effect of radioactivity on live.

Stinky bozo

[albertj-76036 · 1/10 · 8 June 2023]

Don't watch this, these people are clowns. They over exaggerate the danger and provide facts that are false today.

If the two are scientists then i'm a neurosurgeon. I don't believe they have a lot experience and are probably college students. They are essentially not following the scientific process and just collecting small samples and not getting any solid data

If you want to watch something that actually is about chernobyl, then go onto youtube and watch something like veritasium. They provide actual facts and also voice the people living there's concerns, such as food and cleanup.

Also, i support the ukraine.

Really bad documentary filmmaking

[adrian-560-733417 · 1/10 · 7 July 2021]

As others have mentioned, overly dramatic and gives the viewer a false sense of danger. Poorly written and utterly boring. Don't waste your time with this trash.