As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You have been warned.
- The part where lava suddenly bursts through the inner wall of Ruth's cabin (pictured).
- The part where Ruth jumps into the acid lake. Especially the very thought of either doing that or crossing the lake, which you know will most likely burn through the hull of the boat, dumping you inside and causing you to most likely die a horrible death.
- Related, everything in the Squick subfolder on the YMMV page.
- The skinny-dipping deaths at the start of the movie. They (mostly) use a Gory Discretion Shot by panning away, but still...
- Also the extremely narrow escape of young Graham, who was on the brink of jumping into that same hot acidic pool for a swim, before Harry snatched him up in mid-leap.
- The pyroclastic flow, basically the non-video game equivalent of the Advancing Wall of Doom, but it's advancing at something like 100 mph. We see a quick glimpse of the massive column undergoing what looks to be a fountain collapse, and then cutting to the flow making quick work of any trees and houses it encounters. But the crown jewel for this moment has got to be when the flow surges over the ridge, hurling a few rocks into the town in the process, before leaping into the town of Dante's Peak, razing it to the ground as it goes. It smashes houses apart and tosses cars and trucks into the air. What civic town buidings are left from the first eruption, literally and instantly explode into dust and rubble. When it cuts back to the aftermath, it depicts an ash-covered destroyed hellscape, with car frames twisted around tree stumps. It’s also Truth in Television, for as shown at St Pierre in 1902, Mt Lamington in 1951 and the various forests around Mt St Helens, pyroclastic flows can be just that damn destructive.
- Imagine the horror on the Wando family’s faces as they see the mountain that they have lived under all their life decapitate itself with the sheer force of the explosions, and then desolate their town, especially considering that they caught the best seats of giant pyroclastic flows and surges demolishing everything they touch, and hoping that they can reach the mine as the avalanche gains ground on their fleeing vehicle.
- On a related note, the final eruption itself. This volcano has been anything but calm, but the final most explosive eruption of the volcano takes the mountain’s violence into a class of its own, as just the opening salvo of this event makes the top of the mountain burst open and takes a significant chunk out of the height of Dante’s Peak. As the volcano utterly loses its shit it sends a gigantic mushroom cloud of ash and pumice skyward, the size of which is comparable to the ones formed by the 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo. If this volcano was a real thing, it’s undoubtable that it would hold a place in history as what can only be described as one of the greatest plinian eruptions of the twentieth century. And considering the devastation it causes, if the evacuation order hadn’t been followed through, it could have been one of the deadliest.
- The start of the eruption is pretty frightening if you put yourself in the shoes of the town. Bridges and buildings collapse, people escape on foot across roads where panicked drivers ignore lanes, and smaller cars desperately drive into the river to escape and are washed away. All under a sky rapidly filling with ash. The imagery and civilian responses are almost apocalyptic.
- Towards the end of the film, Harry ends up trapped in the truck, with a broken arm (complete with bone shard sticking out of his skin), and twenty tons of rocks and boulders slowly crushing the truck's roof on top of him. He is bent into the foetal position across the bench seat, with the collapsed steel roof canopy full of boulders literally inches from his face, squealing and threatening to give way at any moment and crush Harry to death. He survives being trapped in that that crevice for two days, with no food or water and only a very bleak prospect of survival and rescue. Yikes.
- In addition to Harry, the Wandos are also trapped with a limited supply of food, water, light, and oxygen further up the mine. And unlike Harry, who can slightly reassure himself with the beeping sound of the activated ELF, they have no clue until the rescue crews arrive whether they'll be rescued or die in that mine. Rachel has the added stress of also not knowing that Harry made it to relative safety in the truck, and probably spent that time fearing and believing he'd been killed in the mine's partial collapse.
- The final shot of the film showing the now-quiet volcano........and there's almost nothing left of it. Gone is the calm, beautiful snow-capped peak and most of the flank, replaced instead with a great gaping crater that reaches into the very heart of the mountain. The camera lingers on this and ominous music plays, hinting that whilst the beast has gone back to sleep for now it will wake up again........
- Even more chilling is that the shot is actually of Mount St. Helens after she erupted in 1980, with her eruption being so powerful that it reduced the mountain's height by over a thousand feet as a result of a flank collapse.
