Before 2020, science-fiction films about apocalyptic pandemics and other deadly diseases felt fantastically on par with speculative stories featuring invading aliens or murderous cyborgs. But now, it seems as though they’ve become the scariest of science fact.
While the beginning of Before the Fire hasn’t happened — yet — it’s easy to watch what’s going on and picture yourself in middle of trying to escape a large city under martial law and with all air travel shut down, only to escape to a small town where a group of right-wing hicks have taken over, shooting everyone not on their side.
That’s the basic idea of Fire and it mostly works, except for the characters and the actors playing them, all seemingly fresh from a CW casting call. Jenna Lyng Adams stars as Ava, an actress on a show about werewolf strippers. She, her blogger significant other (Jackson Davis) and his hunky brother (Ryan Vigilant) are all so pretty, it kind of sucks all power out of the well-coiffed proceedings.
Much like a vaccine for COVID, there needs to be a good movie made about a pandemic, but, sadly, Before the Fire just isn’t it. However, if we all survive this, it might make a good series to air after Riverdale. —Louis Fowler