Skyfire (2019)

Skyfire is the kind of gloriously old-fashioned disaster thriller that doesn’t pretend to be subtle—it wants to knock you back in your seat with fire, ash, and momentum, and it mostly succeeds. Simon West stages the chaos with a pulp filmmaker’s grin, piling on nerve-jangling set pieces and clean, easy-to-follow action as paradise turns into a pressure cooker. The film’s hook isn’t just the spectacle of a volcano waking up; it’s the human scramble inside it, with family tensions and split-second choices giving the mayhem a pulse. If you’re allergic to big, loud, sometimes implausible disaster-movie excess (and some intense peril and on-screen deaths), this won’t convert you—but if you miss the era when movies were allowed to be pure, breathless ride, Skyfire delivers the goods.

Skyfire is clearly aiming to be a slick, crowd-pleasing volcano rollercoaster: big spectacle, constant peril, and a family-in-crisis hook to give the chaos some heart. The problem is the characters and writing are so thin that the emotional beats feel pre-programmed, and the suspense often boils down to “run from the lava” variations you’ve seen done better elsewhere. If you want a fresh disaster movie with smart tension and memorable people, this will likely feel like a noisy remix of older volcanic thrillers rather than its own thing. If you’re happy to switch your brain off and watch eruptions, falling debris, and frantic escapes delivered at a brisk pace, there’s enough visual mayhem here to justify a casual watch.