Pyromania looks at people whose relationship with fire crosses from fascination into compulsion, using interviews and case studies rather than reenactment. The central case is John Orr, a California arson investigator who used his position to study fire scenes by day and set them himself by night, eventually linked to thousands of fires including some that killed people, and the film uses his career to ask why an expert paid to stop fires would keep starting them. A second case follows a man identified only as Bob, a serial arsonist now serving multiple life sentences in a psychiatric institution, who describes what setting a fire feels like from the inside. Experts weigh in on where the impulse comes from, distinguishing pyromania from arson committed for revenge or profit and describing it instead as a compulsion closer to addiction. The film also touches on children who are drawn to fire before they understand its consequences. It stays close to these individual accounts rather than offering a broader theory of the behavior.