Chernobyl: Abyss

Chernobyl: Abyss

The aftermath of a shocking explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station made hundreds of people sacrifice their lives to clean up the site of the catastrophe and to successfully prevent an even bigger disaster that could have turned a large part of the European continent into an uninhabitable exclusion zone. This is their story.

  • Released: 2021-04-15
  • Runtime: 136 minutes
  • Genre: Adventure, Drama, History
  • Stars: Danila Kozlovsky, Oksana Akinshina, Philip Avdeev, Ravshana Kurkova, Arthur Beschastny, Nikolay Kozak, Igor Chernevich, Anton Shvarts, Andrey Archakov, Samvel Tadevosian, Dmitry Beseda, Pavel Davydov, Dmitry Matveev, Mariya Abramova, Daniela Bogatyreva, Alexander Alyabyev, Nikolay Samsonov, Mariya Ulyanova, Anatoly Prosalov, Alina Milkova, Margarita Mezina, Ekaterina Mezina, Pavel Chernyavskiy, Nataliya Blazhievskaya, Petr Tereschenko, Andrey Kazakov, Kai Aleks Getts, Savely Albutov, Polina Raykina, Elvira Kekeyeva, Yuliya Dzhulai, Anna-Mariya Danilenko, Anastasiya Kuimova, Aleksandr Kudrenko, Olha Makieieva, Yury Oborotov, Dmitriy Podnozov, Vladimir Simonov, Vladimir Svirskiy, Anna Dubrovskaya, Vladislav Abashin, Yelena Voronchikhina, Anton Filipenko, Oleg Ryazantsev, Alexandra Cherkasova, Yury Mezhevich, Gleb Puskepalis, Anna Shatilova, Maxim Blinov, Ren Hanami, Svetlana Kotova, Tatiana Kargaeva
  • Director: Danila Kozlovsky
 Comments
  • Neptune165 - 13 March 2023
    Should be about the disaster
    I was curious to see a Russian version of this story. Regrettably this was terrible. False epic heroism, muddled storytelling, unlikeable major characters, little attention to historical detail. I was expecting more. This film was made as a direct response to the HBO series "Chernobyl." It was touted as focusing more on the heroism and sacrifice of Chernobyl firefighters, plant workers, and liquidators, instead of that pesky Soviet silence the HBO series was so fixated on. The HBO series far surpasses any attempts at storytelling that the 2021 "Chernobyl" attempts to offer, including highlighting the heroism and sacrifice of so many brave people. The truth of Chernobyl is told only on the most superficial of levels in this film: there was an accident. A lot of people got sick. People cleaned it up. Radiation. Nothing of substance is truthful: not the way the fire was handled by the firefighters; not the members of the Chernobyl Commission; not the way that the liquidation was carried out; and certainly not the way that the Soviet government and nuclear industry made every liquidator's life harder by prioritizing the State's reputation over human life. Not one single real liquidator was mentioned in the film. Valery Legasov, Boris Shcherbina, General Antoshkin, General Tarakanov, Col. General Pikalov, Vasily Nesterenko, Alexander Borovoi, Nikolai Ryzhkov, Vladimir Dolgikh... none of these names are mentioned. I don't think any real names of firefighters or plant workers were used either. Kind of difficult to honor someone's sacrifice and heroism if you don't even put their names in the movie. Many who saw both versions preferred the HBO show because it demonstrated how the secrecy imposed by the Soviet government made their jobs at Chernobyl harder. Everyone has different tastes, but if you are looking for any kind of an even remotely accurate or truthful telling of the story of Chernobyl, you will not find it in the 2021 film. And for any hardliners who are going to say, "it's a movie it's not going to be completely accurate." I agree, but can't we make it even 1% accurate?
  • whatgift - 29 January 2022
    Too long without the plot to back it up
    A lot of people are comparing this to the Chernobyl mini series - this feels a lot more real and less westernised, but devotes too much time to the romantic subplot which just hinders the flow of the story. I definitely appreciate the Russians telling a different side to this disaster though.
  • richkiel - 2 November 2021
    Fake
    While the HBO series brought us a fabricated female genius scientist who never existed in real life, just to shove in feminist b.s., this series invented its own falsehoods. It takes real events, but puts made-up characters in the shoes of very real people, without caring for what these people did. It does so brazenly and deliberately. If the story revolved around fictional characters who find themselves in this crisis without playing pivotal roles in major events surrounding the crisis, it would be perfectly ok. But when you take for instance the divers who went under the reactor, and invent who they were and what they did, you commit a kind of fraud that is inexcusable. These people deserve to be represented in cinema in a way that is as accurate as possible. Otherwise you are lying to people and creating a false image of these heroes. It's particularly bad when you have no good reason to resort to fantasy to such a degree. The filmmakers thought they could just make anything up if they felt like it. And the worst part of it is that it is not very interesting or emotionally engaging.