Fire Serpent is set in Minnesota where Jake Realm (Nicholas Brendon) works as an all man firefighter, while out in the bush damping out some forest fires he sees something strange, after an explosion the fire seems to come to life & reach out & grab is partner Dave (Steve Boyle) who gets toasted. Wracked by guilt & unsure of what he has seen Jake drowns his sorrow's in his local watering hole when ex-firefighter Dutch Fallon (Randolph Mantooth) tells Jake that the fire he saw was in fact alive & had a purpose & conscience. Jake scoffs at the claim but as the forest fires become more mysterious & he sees the evidence for himself Jake comes round to Dutch's way of thinking. Meanwhile the FBI think that Dutch is starting the fires & use local departments for their own needs but the truth is far more sinister as alien fire creatures from the surface of the sun blown here by solar winds are setting things on fire. A lot.
This Canadian American co-production was directed by John Terlesky & is yet again another Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' original, in other words you can guarantee it's crap. To be fair to the script it does at least try to be a bit different as there's no genetic experiments gone wrong on sort species of animal turning them into vicious killers or there's no huge giant sea creature or the like, no here in Fire Serpent there's living alien fire from the surface of the sun which is as ridiculous as it sounds & since this is a low budget Sci-Fi Channel flick you know it's as dumb as hell despite trying & almost succeeding to do something that bit different. You know what Fire Serpent has a stupid premise & it's boring & badly written. Nothing is explained to any great satisfaction, why does this alien fire thing which just looks like a ball of fire sometimes burn things (the forest fires & homes) yet at other times doesn't (the wooden fence it hides under to avoid the rain, inside Jake's backpack), why does it sometimes resemble a huge fire creature while at other's it's just a tiny fleck of flame & how can it possess people & make them walk through fire without them being burnt or even their clothes catching on fire? Then there's the boring subplots which take up most of the films runtime including some rubbish about a rouge agent trying to use the alien to destroy the world in a biblical type way, Government conspiracies & Fallon being accused of being an arsonist. The whole film is a jumbled mess that doesn't flow properly, makes next to no sense, it totally stupid & takes itself very seriously which just cheapens the whole thing even more. To be honest I am really struggling to say anything positive about this.
The only mildly interesting thing about Fire Serpent is that a one William Shatner was executive producer & also gets a mysterious 'Created By' credit as well. That's it really, there's nothing even remotely worth mentioning besides that, sorry. The final 'battle' scene is appallingly edited & looks awful, there's this high security Government facility yet only our two heroes seem to be around & they are allowed to blow up two huge storage tanks without anyone challenging them. The CGI effects are predictably terrible & the alien creature is never really seen, it's just more scenes of badly CGI rendered fire roaring & making silly noises. There's zero gore & the only death worth noting is when someone is burned in half. Fire Serpent can't really decide if it wants to be a thriller or a sci-fi film & ends up as a complete mess really.
With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 all I can say is where did the money go? This has cheap Sci-Fi Channel production values & it looks drab & flat with no sense of style at all. Filmed in Ontario in Canada. Most of the cast are TV regulars & none stand out as being that good & the terrible material doesn't help.
Fire Serpent is an awful film & it's as simple & straight forward as that really. It's a mess of a film that makes little sense & is just plain stupid. Par for the course for the Sci-Fi Channel then I suppose.
This Canadian American co-production was directed by John Terlesky & is yet again another Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' original, in other words you can guarantee it's crap. To be fair to the script it does at least try to be a bit different as there's no genetic experiments gone wrong on sort species of animal turning them into vicious killers or there's no huge giant sea creature or the like, no here in Fire Serpent there's living alien fire from the surface of the sun which is as ridiculous as it sounds & since this is a low budget Sci-Fi Channel flick you know it's as dumb as hell despite trying & almost succeeding to do something that bit different. You know what Fire Serpent has a stupid premise & it's boring & badly written. Nothing is explained to any great satisfaction, why does this alien fire thing which just looks like a ball of fire sometimes burn things (the forest fires & homes) yet at other times doesn't (the wooden fence it hides under to avoid the rain, inside Jake's backpack), why does it sometimes resemble a huge fire creature while at other's it's just a tiny fleck of flame & how can it possess people & make them walk through fire without them being burnt or even their clothes catching on fire? Then there's the boring subplots which take up most of the films runtime including some rubbish about a rouge agent trying to use the alien to destroy the world in a biblical type way, Government conspiracies & Fallon being accused of being an arsonist. The whole film is a jumbled mess that doesn't flow properly, makes next to no sense, it totally stupid & takes itself very seriously which just cheapens the whole thing even more. To be honest I am really struggling to say anything positive about this.
The only mildly interesting thing about Fire Serpent is that a one William Shatner was executive producer & also gets a mysterious 'Created By' credit as well. That's it really, there's nothing even remotely worth mentioning besides that, sorry. The final 'battle' scene is appallingly edited & looks awful, there's this high security Government facility yet only our two heroes seem to be around & they are allowed to blow up two huge storage tanks without anyone challenging them. The CGI effects are predictably terrible & the alien creature is never really seen, it's just more scenes of badly CGI rendered fire roaring & making silly noises. There's zero gore & the only death worth noting is when someone is burned in half. Fire Serpent can't really decide if it wants to be a thriller or a sci-fi film & ends up as a complete mess really.
With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 all I can say is where did the money go? This has cheap Sci-Fi Channel production values & it looks drab & flat with no sense of style at all. Filmed in Ontario in Canada. Most of the cast are TV regulars & none stand out as being that good & the terrible material doesn't help.
Fire Serpent is an awful film & it's as simple & straight forward as that really. It's a mess of a film that makes little sense & is just plain stupid. Par for the course for the Sci-Fi Channel then I suppose.