The new Icelandic disaster movie that features footage of actual volcanic eruptions is getting a digital release from Signature Entertainment.
Anna Arnardottir (Vigdis Hrefna Palsdottir) is a top vulcanologist assigned to look at a series of volcanic eruptions on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. She finds that the earthquakes which herald these eruptions are moving inland towards Reykjavik. Could the capital city be on a course for destruction by lava? And can she convince a government keen to reassure tourists that it’s still okay to come to Iceland that it probably isn’t?
That all sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, rather than follow traditional Hollywood disaster movie templates, THE FIRES saddles its sour-faced lead with an uninspiring love affair with hunky photographer Thomas (Pilou Asbaek from Game of Thrones) and spends far to much time on her home life with her husband and child instead of getting on with showing us scenes of devastation (even a couple of model shots would have been welcome).
Yes we do get some authentic footage of volcanos erupting but by the hour mark you’ll be wishing those eruptions were a little more frequent and a lot more violent. The final twenty minutes does offers us the promised disaster, but it’s decidedly low budget and consists mainly of a dust storm as our lead has to go in search of her little girl who has placed herself in peril in the latest in a series of lazy plot contrivances. Performances are middling (you really need an actress of Amy Adams’ calibre to make an audience invested in what happens to the decidedly dreary Anna) and the music score doesn’t pull its finger out when it really needs to. One for disaster movie completists and Icelandic cinema obsessives only. Here’s a trailer:
THE FIRES is out from Signature Entertainment on digital on Monday 27th July 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment