Into the Storm (**½)
Directed by: Steven Quale
Starring: Richard Armitage, Sarah
Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Scott Lawrence, Nathan Kress,
Max Deacon, Arlen Escarpeta, Jeremy Sumpter
Seen: September 11th 2014
**½ Out of ****
Into the Storm is a bit of an unexpected
movie as the tornado idea has been mostly absent from the silver screen for
quite some time, with no real and current urgency for the genre. I’m not quite
sure why this was made either, as just about everything in it is a pale
imitation of 1996’s Twister; the actors are not as well-known as the cast of
Twister was at the time, the visual effects are about on par with those in Twister,
18 years down the line (from what I can remember – it’s been a while since I’ve
seen it), the soundtrack goes down a different… track, in that the cool contemporary
rock of Twister is replaced with a dramatic (mostly overly dramatic) orchestral
accompaniment, and Into the Storm does not have the same sort of interesting
characters (remember Dusty from Twister? Philip Seymour Hoffman was great there…).
The level of character stupidity in
Into the Storm is well established as the movie starts with four teenagers in a
car (when they should rather be at home, perhaps…) parked on some rural road. Through
the dark they spot power lines being uprooted in showers of sparks with lightning
strikes illuminating the oncoming tornado. Instead of high-tailing it out of
there, an idiot kid gets out of the car to film it, only realising his mistake
far too late, as their car is picked up and flung away just as he gets into it.
This brings Pete Moore (Walsh) to town, a storm-chaser and desperate
documentary filmmaker with his crew, including (against Pete’s original wishes)
his meteorologist Allison Stone (Callies). Allison has trouble convincing Pete
of the most likely location for tornado touchdowns, and she also has to deal
with her 5 year old daughter, very upset because mommy isn’t home.
In town, high school vice-principal
Gary Fuller (Armitage) and his two sons Trey (Kress) and Donnie (Max) are
headed to school for a school ceremony, with Trey and Donnie also busy
recording time capsule videos for a school project. Trey is supposed to be
filming the ceremony, but gets Donnie to take over when he gets a chance to
help his crush Kaitlyn (Debnam-Carey) with her school project. Trey and Kaitlyn
head for an abandoned factory, where a tornado passes and the building
collapses, trapping them inside. Through various other tornados, random
encounters, and miraculous voice calls, Gary joins up with Pete and his team
and they head towards the factory to save Trey and Kaitlyn, even though Pete
would rather chase the money shot than try to save someone’s life.
Amid some good visual effects, Into
the Storm is mostly just another generic, if somewhat above average, disaster
movie. The characters are little more than cardboard cut-outs of normal human
beings driven by stock-standard motivations. The movie is never quite sure
whether it actually wants to be a found footage movie or a movie with
interesting (or strange?) camera angles. The characters run the cameras in some
instances, while in other instances the cameras are mounted were characters would
have a hard time reaching – I say pick a vantage point and stay with it. Into
the Storm looks cool, but the tension never reaches the levels Twister managed,
and when the movie is done, it feels as if there weren’t even that many
tornados to start with. The final big mamma tornado is big, so big that it
fills the screen and the makers almost forget to add something to set the true scale
by. Into the Storm sadly dissipates just as quickly as the tornadoes it
features, I already feel as if I remember more of Twister than I do of Into the
Storm.
Comments