Dracano is another entry in the long list of Syfy Channel Original Movies. Volcanologist Professor Simon Lowell and his colleague Carla Simms (Victoria Pratt) are working on project Kronos, developing a method that applies small explosive devices inside volcanoes which can both harness their geothermic energy and help to prevent eruptions. While testing it on Mt. Baker, the volcano suddenly erupts, killing 50 thousand people in the area, and the scientists are blamed for the disaster. But the situation isn't so simple as the volcano seems to be releasing strange cocoons of petrified magma, containing dragon-like creatures which live their earliest life stages in the Earth's interior only to mature on the surface and go on a killing spree.
Dracano contains examples of:
- Achilles' Heel: The dragons can be killed by bullets, but only for the first seconds after they emerge from the cocoon. Wait long enough and their protective scale-covering forms, making them extraordinarily hard to kill.
- Claustrophobia: Carla suffers from it.
- Clear My Name: What Lowell's trying to do at first. Then comes the "avoiding the dragon apocalypse" thing.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Brayden. And she was right, you know.
- The Dragons Come Back: From a long period of hibernation.
- Friend to All Living Things: Implied with Heather, who is outraged at the military and their plans to exterminate the dragons.
- Government Conspiracy: The government has been covering up the existence of dragons.
- Monumental Damage: The Coliseum and the Eiffel Tower are among the victims.
- Nuke 'em: The military's solution to the dragon problem.
- Our Dragons are Different: They live under the Earth's crust and cocoon themselves in an envelope which protects them from the magma, after which they are expelled from an erupting volcano, leave the cocoon and fly off to form a voracious swarm, destroying everything in their path. To make matters worse they cannot be tracked by heat-seeking missiles and are invisible to radars.
- Portmantitle: Dragon + volcano.
- Sequel Hook: Hard to find a Syfy movie without one.
