Most critics land in the middle. The reviews agree that the eruption is the point and that the effects deliver it: collapsing buildings, roads running with molten rock, a whole town coming apart on a convincing scale. More than one notice also credits the sound design with much of the impact. Nobody is enthusiastic, though; the warmest verdicts call it a serviceable Saturday-night disaster film that does what the genre asks and not much else.
The complaints cluster around the people. Bland characters, flat dialogue and a formulaic storyline recur in almost every review, along with a long wait before the mountain finally goes. The spread is wider than the average suggests. The New York Times and Variety find the human story weak enough to sink the whole thing, and The AV Club, writing some years later, calls even the effects dull. Eye for Film, also looking back, is kinder, crediting the cinematography and some unusual volcanic set-ups with making the danger feel real.