Being pregnant is difficult enough, but imagine carrying a baby while evading the clutches of a deadly wildfire. A standout character from the new disaster movie On Fire faces that exact predicament, a mom named Sarah who is eight months along, has a teenage son, husband, and disgruntled father-in-law to take care of while running from the flames that are consuming her California countryside. Fiona Dourif nails the part in the new movie starring Peter Facinelli (Twilight), who directed the movie alongside co-writer Nick Lyon. We recently caught up with Lyon and Dourif in separate interviews to learn more about their gritty new project that might just make you keep a closer eye out for natural disasters.

Tapping Into the Wildfires of Our Time

Dourif is a California native and grew up hearing about parts of the state around her getting charred by deadly wildfires. “It’s a very, very present issue,” she told MovieWeb. “Every summer in the last three years, there have been weeks that you kind of can’t go outside, or you’re not supposed to.” Meanwhile, co-writer/director Lyon opened up about his personal experiences that helped weave together the On Fire tale:

“I know about seven people who’ve lost their homes to fires. The Malibu fire took a good friend of mine’s house, it took his dogs, it took everything from him. And doing the research, it’s a very similar story with everybody. So I didn’t particularly take one person’s story, but it’s inspired by a lot of different stories […] It’s basically us against nature, and nature is more powerful than us.”

Lyon also touched on how he ultimately got this project off the ground. “It started a long time ago when I was actually just camping with my sons. I was doing a couple of movies a year, and a lot of them are disaster movies. And so I’m very well versed in how to create disaster without having $50 million, or $20 million, or even $10 million on stuff,” explained Lyon. “And so I was going, ‘This is a horrifying notion to be here.’ And the fires were going on, and I’m going, ‘Man, what would I do if all of a sudden, there was a fire blocking the road for us to come in here? This would be horrifying.’

“So then I kind of developed an original treatment about a boy and a dog, and his father was stuck in the woods fleeing a fire. And that’s how it kind of started. That was like 2017. And I kept on it, and then I think 2021 is when some of this opportunity came up. And a film had fallen through for some people, so I immediately pitched. I’d written a new treatment because I didn’t want to deal with having a kid and stuff; that would have been too difficult. And they loved it, and we were up and running really quick.”

Related: Best Disaster Movies of the 2000s

“Film Is All About Collaboration”
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Film is “all about collaboration,” as Lyon told us, and he was able to also get help on the directing front after falling ill with COVID-19 during production. Facinelli took on the role, and both Lyon and Dourif had nothing but positive things to say about working with the actor, who folks might remember from the classic high-school comedy Can’t Hardly Wait:

Our collaboration just kind of went so well that in post, I would call him and ask him what he thinks, and then we just kind of started continued co-editing and co-creating. It really worked out nicely.

And production went so well for Dourif that she now stays in touch with Facinelli regularly. “Me and him are friends,” she said. “I get to play poker with him once in a while now. He’s a really generous actor.”

Another positive addition to the production: veteran actor Lance Henriksen, who plays Facinelli’s ailing dad. We watch as his character George splits his time between the trailer outside the family home and inside their living room trying to smoke forbidden cigarettes. Henriksen is that instantly familiar face from hits like Aliens and The Terminator, and he’s still going strong at age 83. Lyon explained:

“He always appears to be such a tough guy and everything. And he shows up, and he’s just the nicest person in the world. He let himself be frail, let himself be vulnerable. I really loved what he brought to the screen, you know, of a man who’s struggling after the loss of his wife. And he’s got his whole life wrapped up in basically a trailer that he’s living in now, outside his son’s house. He’s got all of his old photos and everything. And when his fire comes along, he’s kind of like, ‘If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go.'”

And interestingly enough, Dourif knew Henriksen when she was a kid, so On Fire was a fun little reunion for her. “Me and him became best friends,” she said. “I hadn’t seen him since I was maybe like 13 or something. But I adore the man.”

Related: Best Natural Disaster Movies, Ranked

Capturing a ‘Very Present Issue’
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As Dourif told us, On Fire was an attractive project due to the real-life threat it captures in the heartfelt story. The devastation we see happen to the world around the Laughlin family in the film might just leave a lasting impact on you. “This movie got me thinking a lot about all of the repercussions with fires and all of the animals and all the downstream effects,” said Dourif. “I ended up reading a lot about the Paradise fires, and watching those videos of those people stuck and just watching everything that they’ve known, burned to the ground.”

The constant images of society burning in On Fire is certainly challenging to pull off, as Lyon told us, but he has experience with disaster movies and made it work. As he explained:

I talked to the visual effects coordinator, who I had worked with many times, and I’m like, ‘So can we pull off a raging forest fire around this family without burning down a forest?’ […] I used a lot of light techniques, basically, the lights with smoke, and then some practical fire. And then we enhanced everything with visual effects.

But a movie can’t survive with good characters, and Dourif’s Sarah is perhaps the strongest one. “The character on the page came across as very real and uncomfortable, and just trying to make it work,” she said. “The characters read as real people. I feel like I could relate to and liked all of them. I thought that they weren’t caricatures. They had faults and relationships. And I think she had she has a temper, which I appreciate in a pregnant woman.”

Looking ahead, Lyon is continuing to set up next projects, particularly ones that can be placed in similar subgenres as On Fire. “I have one right now called The Vessel, which is an Arctic research vessel, and it has also some of this environmental theme,” he told us. “I’m looking at getting that done in the next year. And a lot of times things just come up, you know? I think I’m gonna probably do an earthquake movie this fall as well. Maybe I’ll go for ‘Earth, wind and fire’ next].”

From Cineverse, On Fire opens only in theaters Friday.

SAG-AFTRA has approved an interim agreement for On Fire since the film is being released by Cineverse, an independent, non-AMPTP affiliated distributor. Under the terms, members “may work on these productions without being in violation of the strike order,” per the guild. The entire team of On Fire expresses their gratitude to SAG-AFTRA for allowing the cast to promote On Fire during this challenging time for the industry.