On Fire

Making a wildfire movie without ever lighting a real fire sounds like a contradiction, yet that is what Nick Lyon and Peter Facinelli did with 'On Fire', a survival drama running a lean 80 minutes and drawn from the real events of one of northern California's most destructive blazes. Facinelli, who also takes the lead, ended up behind the camera almost by accident.

Dave Laughlin works in construction, carries debts he can’t see a way out of and lives with his family in a house deep in the woods. His wife Sarah is eight months pregnant, their son Clay has a high school track season riding on him, and grandfather George, tied to an oxygen tank and still sneaking cigarettes, turns every conversation into a small domestic skirmish. When the news mentions a fire one valley over, nobody in the house panics: nothing has burned around there in forty years.

The day he drives out for supplies to protect the property, the fire jumps far sooner than anyone expected and the road home is closed. From then on 'On Fire' is a race against the clock, with the family split up, phones dropping out as the masts go down and a wall of smoke tightening around them. Running alongside it is Kayla, a 911 operator in her second week on the job, hearing on the line what we are watching on screen. How many obstacles fit into a single night?

The shoot had a setback of its own: Lyon tested positive for covid and Facinelli took his chair to finish the film, which is why the credits carry two directors. Around him are Fiona Dourif, well known to genre audiences from 'Chucky', Asher Angel of 'Shazam!', veteran Lance Henriksen, who knew something about collective panic back in 'Aliens', and Glenn Morshower as the local hardware store owner.

'On Fire' premiered at the 2023 Mammoth Film Festival and opened in American cinemas that September in 417 cinemas, taking very little money. Reviews split down the middle, warm about the fire sequences and about Ashlei Foushee as the call handler, much cooler about how predictable the script turns. British viewers got it on digital from 15 April 2024, and it remains a rental or purchase here.

• Drama
• Thriller
• Action