Chernobyl: Abyss, also known as Chernobyl 1986 (Russian: Чернобыль, "Chernobyl") is a 2021 Russian film directed by Danila Kozlovsky.
It is about the first responses to the nuclear meltdown disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in April 1986. Kozlovsky stars as Alexey Karpushin, a (fictional) firefighter in Pripyat who, at the beginning of the film, runs into his old girlfriend Olga, a hairdresser. Alexey and Olga go out on a date, but when he comes to her apartment and meets her ten-year-old son also named Alexey, he quickly connects the dots. Olga turns on him, refusing to get back together and refusing to accompany him when he gets a transfer to Kiev.
On April 25 Alexey's buddies at the fire station throw him a goodbye party. At 1:23 the next morning, Reactor #4 at Chernobyl goes boom. Since he technically wasn't part of the local fire brigade anymore, Alexey did not go to the Chernobyl roof with his friends and so unlike them did not absorb a fatal dose of radiation. Instead, he helps rescue his friends from the scene. He is soon pressed into service as part of an emergency party, which must go into the bowels of the plant and open a valve to drain spilled coolant water. If the water is not drained, when the melted core hits it, a steam explosion will result that will blow up the entire plant and spread nuclear contamination all over the Soviet Union and Europe.
Meanwhile, little Alexey Junior was out on his bike and witnessed the explosion of Reactor #4. He soon becomes deathly ill with radiation sickness.
Compare Chernobyl, the hit 2019 HBO miniseries. Unlike that series, this movie does not feature any scenes of the Chernobyl plant being operated, instead focusing tightly on the story of Alexey the fictional heroic firefighter.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – History: Other than all the characters being fictional...
- Within hours of the accident, Alexey is whisked from the hospital into a meeting where an emergency response team is discussing the need to drain the coolant water. They consult blueprints and maps of radiation contamination at the facility while they work. In real life, the need to drain the coolant wasn't clear until several days later. And thanks to stalling from local authorities, the horrific radiation levels at the plant also weren't immediately known.
- Alexey and the rest of the crew have to put on diving suits and fully submerge to reach the emergency manual drain valves. In real life, while three men did have to go into the bowels of the plant to open the valves, the water was no more than waist-deep.
- No casualties were sent to Switzerland, or to any foreign country, for treatment for radiation sickness.
- Based on a True Story: The film opens with a title stating "This film is based on true events," while admitting that all the characters are fictional.
- Bittersweet Ending: Alexey dies from radiation poisoning, but his son is saved in Switzerland, and in the last scene Olga meets him at the airport.
- Canary in a Coal Mine: As Alexey drives to the plant on the morning of the 26th, dead birds start falling from the sky. One hits his windshield, causing him to wreck the car.
- Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: The Pripyat speakers broadcast the announcement that the city must be evacuated due to an explosion at the plant.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: The realization that men are going to have to go diving in the basement of the plant, to open the drain valves, causes several people sitting at the table to all light up cigarettes at once.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: Alexey is on an evacuation bus out of Pripyat with Olga and their son. He has already refused to be part of the mission to go into the plant and open the drain valves, explaining that he doesn't actually work with the Pripyat fire brigade anymore. However, he knows the plant better than anyone on the team and he also knows a shortcut. He gets off the bus, hitches a ride back, and joins the mission into the basement.
- Creepy Basement: The poorly-lit, flooded, radioactively contaminated basement where the crisis team must go to open the drain valves.
- Crisis Point Hospital: The Pripyat hospital is overwhelmed with casualties. When one nurse says that there's nowhere to put Alexey, another says that yes there is, because another patient has died.
- Cut Phone Lines: On the morning of the 26th, Alexey starts to realize that something has gone badly wrong when people tell him that the phone lines in Pripyat have been cut. (This happened.)
- Distant Finale: A "Three Months Later" title introduces the last scene, where Olga comes to the airport and meets Alexey Junior, who's come back from Switzerland after the doctors saved his life.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Having been rejected by Olga, Alexey gets good and drunk at his April 25 going-away party. He makes the Olga situation even worse when he leaves the party and shows up drunk at her apartment.
- Free-Range Children: Alexey Junior and his two buddies are on their bikes outside the plant at 1:23 am, having told their parents they were "night fishing". Alexey lingers too long and gets a large dose of radiation.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: As the drain team is working its way to the valves, Valery has a panic attack and says that he can't go any further. Boris calmly walks over, punches Valery in the stomach, then says "Get your breath back and we'll have a little talk."Boris: I have a wife and kids in Kiev getting ready to celebrate May Day, so you can stick your "can't go on" up your ass.
- I Can Still Fight!: Nikita takes a face full of steam when a pipe ruptures. Despite getting second-degree burns and seeming to be suffering from radiation sickness, he gasps "I am fine to continue." The others insist that he sit down and wait while the rest of them continue.
- Light Is Not Good: The frightening Pillar of Light that shoots up from the ruptured reactor after the explosion, and the glowing core that Boris sees when he opens a door in the plant.
- Mathematician's Answer: When Alexey catches on about how the old girlfriend that he hasn't seen for about ten years has a ten-year-old son.Alexey: Whose is he?
Olga: He's mine. - Noodle Incident: This film spends no time dealing with the design flaws or operating errors that caused the plant to blow up, other than one scene where a reactor operator rants at an apparatchik about the plant being badly designed. As the two of them are going down to drain the water, Alexey asks his buddy Valery, an engineer, why Chernobyl exploded. Valery shrugs and says "People". Though this actually is somewhat Truth in Television, as the authorities and plant staff genuinely didn't know why the reactor had exploded during the film's timeframe, with it taking several months of investigation before the actual cause was determined.
- One-Woman Wail: The soundtrack features a woman's ghostly wailing as Boris opens a door and looks straight at the burning reactor core. He takes a lethal dose of radiation in seconds, before he closes the door.
- Pillar of Light: A scary beam of light shoots up from the exploded, burning core of Reactor #4.
- Retirony: Alexey has been transferred to Kiev and his co-workers throw him a going-away party on April 25. The next morning he winds up joining them at the scene of the fire anyway.
- Time Skip: Two weeks pass between the opening sequence, where Alexey and Olga meet in Pripyat, and Alexey's going-away party and the explosion at the plant.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: As in Real Life, vomiting is a sign of deadly radiation exposure. The firefighters at Chernobyl start vomiting after they come down from the roof, and Alexey Junior, who watched the explosion, vomits onto his mother's lap while they're in the evacuation bus.
