Fire from Below (2009) starring Kevin Sorbo, GiGi Erneta, Maeghan Albach, Alex Cord, Pattie Crawford directed by Andrew Stevens, Jim Wynorski Movie Review

Fire from Below (2009)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Maeghan Albach and Kevin Sorbo in Fire from Below (2009)

It's Why it's called Sci-Fi

Following the discovery of a rich vein of a special version of Lithium, Drake Industries puts pressure on its team of minors to tap it as soon as possible but it leads to an error and the vein of special Lithium flowing lose which when it gets in to contact with water causes sudden fires and explosions. Having just arrived in the area, former pro football star turned geologist Jake Denning (Kevin Sorbo) and soon to be wife Dr. Karen Watkins (Maeghan Albach) discover a dead body in the lake and some unusual charring to the decking on their pontoon. When they return to town to inform the Sheriff they discover the place seemingly abandoned. What they discover is the Lithium is not only acting aggressively with water but appears to be hunting people down.

They call it sci-fi for a reason and whilst more often than not you may feel it should be called sci-iffy it is a licence to bend the laws of physics even it the setting is reality. I say that purely as a warning for anyone who was thinking of watching "Fire from Below" with an expectation of some real science as this is fiction combined with disaster movie cliche which means a terrible movie but in being terrible it sometimes becomes entertaining.

Now I am not going to waste my time with a thorough review of "Fire from Below" because I wasted enough of it having watched it. So what we get is the by the book storyline; money hungry corporation causes a disaster, people die and the most famous actor gets to save the day. Along the way it throws some science mumbo jumbo at us, as in people say something which is meant to sound smart but never does and of course there are the special effects of this Lithium combusting with water. The trouble is that none of it gripping and even Kevin Sorbo seems to be going though the motions as a hero figure delivering cornball dialogue but never once managing to come across as anything other than Kevin Sorbo delivering weak dialogue.

What this all boils down to is that "Fire from Below" is poor and often amusingly poor especially when it comes to the combination of the effects and dialogue. But in truth "Fire from Below" is just a typical sci-fi disaster movie, the sort of which you tend to find shown on TV late at night when those with insomnia are channel surfing.


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