Sigh… 'Dracano'. The sooner we start, the sooner we can get this over with.
Petra (Sophie Tilson) is a little cutie with an Australian accent who is in the process of deploying the KRONOS module for hard working volcanologist Dr. Lowell (Corin Nemec). I've forgot all the details regarding where is the location of this active volcano that the little cutie is working at or what exactly KRONOS does, even though I just saw this movie a few minutes ago, but I do know that Petra is risking her life to deploy this nonsense because the Volcano is about to blow and Dr. Lowell won't let her flee to safety until this thing is done. Asshole. Then the oddest thing happens. The Volcano blows and Petra jumps on her bicycle to ride away, even though there's an SUV right there. Petra, cute as she is, doesn't seem to be very bright. The other odd thing that happens is that a Dragon Pod comes out of this volcano, hatches, and eats Petra. The next odd thing is that while we will never see Petra again, nobody in this movie really seems concerned that Petra is missing. Nobody.
So this volcano erupts and bad things are happening, like bunches of dragons coming out and stuff, but the Government cannot just say… "Hey, we're overrun by dragons, it sucks, but that's what it is". That's not gonna fly. So instead they blame Dr. Lowell and his KRONOS experiment for making the volcano erupt and killing a bunch a people. The government… I tell you. Dr. Lowell, however, isn't gonna go out like no punk so he packs up his daughter Heather (Mia Faith) and his trusted colleague Carla (Victoria Pratt), whom he happens to be secretly in love with, and they run off to somewhere to find out something!
What they find is the Big Coverup! Remember Mount St. Helens? Dragon Coverup baby. We managed to get over on that one though. How about Area 51? Dragons! The government leaked aliens because aliens aren't real and folks won't believe that… but dragons? People would be running in the streets and chaos would reign. Apparently these dragons live in the core of the earth existing in lava, but the minute they touch air, they hatch, their skin hardens and they start eating people. Extinction is upon us. Yes, the bratty daughter doesn't know why the army is trying to kill these dragons, because she's dumb, kind of like Petra, but it doesn't matter because all looks lost.
Not so fast! Yes, the government blamed Dr. Lowell and his fancy KRONOS experiment for the volcanic eruption, but now that the dragons are free… who do you think they call to help save us all? Yep, that's right. And what technology do you think they need to save us all? Yep, that's right. Worst still is the Queen dragon is making her way to the surface, and if that happens the menu will be 7 billion… or 8 billion now I think… human beings. … and a child will save us. It's complicated.
I have to tell you, it was really hard to focus while watching director Kevin O'Neill's 'Dracano', mainly because so much time was spent NOT watching volcanic dragons. I was watching a movie that spent an awful lot of time watching a father and daughter bond over bad food and lame conversation, or sitting on the edge of my seat observing the interaction between our two chemistry absent volcanologists, wondering 'will they or won't they'. Then I had to deal with the daughter and her jealousy issues over the volcanologist that was lusting after her daddy, and don't let us forget the strained relationship between the ambitious reporter (Heidi Fielek) and her conspiracy theorist assistant (Dominka Julliet). I think there were also some lame attempts at humor, but since it wasn't funny, I'm not sure about this. Every once in a while I'd get a quick cutaway of some dragon mayhem, but for the most of the movie I had deal with mundane B.S., and mundane B.S. doesn't usually make for a satisfying movie experience, especially when I'm hoping for volcanic dragons.
Fortunately, in the last fifteen or twenty minutes, the dragon mayhem picks up a bit. Not enough to save the movie, but at least it does pick up as we finally have a doomed plan to deal with these dragons we aren't seeing much of and we are also privileged to witness lots of soldiers committing suicide by allowing dragons to eat them and whatnot. The effects weren't as bad as one would think, considering this movie had to have had a rock bottom budget, but it has been my experience in watching these movies that dragons seem to be the easiest things for the budding CGI artist to animate, the acting was about as you would've expected with B-movie vets Corin Nemec and Victoria Pratt doing their best to drag their less experienced cast members along on this messy journey.
Since the SyFy Channel has seriously scaled back their original movie docket, crap movies like 'Dracono' just don't have a real home anymore. Now we have to the find them, as opposed to them finding us. This doesn't please me. Who really wants to look for this stuff? I'll do it, because I have a sickness, but I liked it better when these crap movies came on TV for free.
