Ashfall (2019)

Director: Byung-seo Kim, Hae-jun Lee

Starring: Byung-hun Lee, Jung-woo Ha, Hye-jin Jeon

Stagnant since 1903, at an elevation of 2,744 m, a volcano erupts on the mythical and majestic Baekdu Mountain.

I was so looking forward to another great disaster movie from South Korea, and a volcano disaster movie as a bonus, since I haven’t seen a good volcano movie since ‘Dante’s Peak’ back in 1997. Unfortunately, ‘Ashfall’ is not what I was looking for.

‘Ashfall’ can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it comedy, drama, disaster, war movie, or crime thriller? There are too much humor for anything to be taken seriously. They even attempt emotional scenes, but these fail miserably. There are also so many characters and back stories that I completely forgot about the volcano. There’s too little volcano action to call this a disaster movie. Apart from the opening scene and the climax, there’s hardly any mention-able volcano activity.

The film also blends ideas from ‘San Andreas’, ‘Geostorm’, ‘Tidal Wave’ and ‘Pompeii’ to no avail. It is completely unbelievable and unconvincing. The situations the characters find themselves in are not always believable, and their actions are questionable. The team sent to activate the detonators are complete idiots and incompetent. The visuals are also mediocre. There’s no suspense here and very little that really excited me.

‘Ashfall’ was a box office success, earning $61 million on a $17.7 million budget.

In Korean.

Would I watch it again? No.