Crystal Inferno

The story lacks originality and follows well established tropes with villainous corporate types, wholesome archetypes and just-add-wickedness mayhem. A real Syfy ready summer flick. The one positive and strong exception to this slightly mundane premise is the female lead of Supergirl/Wonder Woman heroine-ness of Claire Forlani'mother/professional character. Sadly the miss use of Jamie Bamber was a obvious disappointment, to equal Forlani.

The special effects are the typical display of scaled-down practical tricks that one expects from this level of disaster movie blended with lower budgeted CGI effects. This doesn't mean that the film is bad or cheap, just didn't want to equate "Inferno: Skyscraper Escape" to the Syfy channel, but yeah this one would work beautifully on their lineup. The effect have ample quality and impact with only a mild drop in CGI quality.

Overall the movie gives a straight-to-Redbox, low budget performance that works as far as action entertainment value for fans of microbudget disaster/action flicks. There is a strong female lead that plays to the heart of the story. There is some superbad acting and some melodrama that falls flat but for what it is, "Inferno: Skyscraper Escape" is a decent flick that should satisfy fans of this type film.

Well I must admit to not being familiar with "Crystal Inferno" (or "Inferno: Skyscraper Escape") prior to stumbling upon it by blind luck. And I am a sucker for disaster movies, so of course I took the time and effort to sit down and watch this 2017 movie.

I will say that it was actually better than I had hoped for, because the vast majority of disaster movies available are just downright horrible and mauled by having grotesquely awful CGI. Luckily the was only so much CGI in "Crystal Inferno" that it didn't really matter that it looked fake sometimes. You could look past that, because the movie was not relying heavily on having a spectacular special effect to blow the audience away. I doubt they would have had the funds for that, but that is another issue.

"Crystal Inferno" is based more on being a story-driven movie that focuses on the characters and not having blazing special effects to make the audience go "oooh" and "aaah". As for the story, well it was entertaining enough actually, albeit very, very predictable and generic.

It should be said that "Crystal Inferno" has TV movie written all over it.

This is not among the worst of disaster movies that I have seen, and it is actually worth the time if you have an hour and a half to spare and got nothing preceding on the menu.

Acting is straight out of stage-school. Wooden and rigid.

The plot is poor. The dialogue/script is very, very poor. This isn't even TV movie quality.

How on earth did Claire Forlani fall from Meet Joe Black to this rubbish? Avoid this. Don't waste 93 minutes of your life.

EDIT: I wrote after having watched the first 20-25 minutes. I wish I could now give it a lower score, as the film just got progressively worse... What Claire Forlani's character did in the lift shaft at about 55 mins is simply ludicrous. The acting surrounding an aerial accident a bit later is even worse.

I wish I could unwatch this diatribe.

Okay, this film does include every disaster flick cliche in the book, but that isn't the worse part of the film. The acting is way beyond amateurish in almost every case. The worse offenders are the kids, but then again they are young. Unfortunately, there are so many plot holes, you can drive a truck through them. Given all that, if you are in the mood for a mindless bit of film that doesn't require any thinking on your part, and you do enjoy disaster flicks, I wouldn't call this a total waste of time, unless you have something better to do.

There are many faults with this movie but are you watching it to find fault or be entertained? If you can forget that superman is not actually real and the A team are not actually super heroes, you will thoroughly enjoy this movie. This is up to you. I really enjoyed it.