While movies shot in the first person aren’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea, it’s still weird that it took until 2014’s Into The Storm to transfer that found footage aesthetic to a good old disaster movie. OK sure, we’d technically already had one in 2008 thanks to Matt Reeves’ superlative Cloverfield, but while slinging an entire kaiju into the middle of New York is one thing, when it comes to a more classic disaster vibe, we needed a disaster far less monstery and far more blustery.
“Twister with more motion sickness” may be an odd way to sum up a movie, but you won’t be too far deep into Steven (Final Destination 5) Quale’s until you realise that’s it’s a fairly accurate pass at a modern day disaster movie that doesn’t have many ideas beyond throwing a whole bunch of POV angles into the usual sights of devestating property damage and selfless acts of heroism.
We join a group of frustrated storm chasers as their attempts to make a documentary about tornadoes is still missing an incredibly important aspect – it hasn’t got any tornado footage yet. As their money is fast running out the team, led by the pushy veteran, Pete, have come to Silverton, Oklahoma on the say-so of their long suffering meteorologist, Allison Stone, who is confident that signs of a major line of developing storms will finally bear windy fruit.
Meanwhile, we are introduced to the struggling family unit of school vice-principle Gary Fuller and his two sons, the sensitive Donnie and the younger, more mischevious Trey. Still shaken by the death of Gary’s wife, the trio’s relationships with one another have been rapidly circling the drain while the pressure of graduation day builds. But soon they’re all going to discover that the actual graduating will be the last thing they’ll remember of this day. While Donnie sneaks off to help his crush, Kaitlyn, film something for a school project at an abandoned paper mill, Pete, Allison and the gang finally manage to score a twister which they hope will grant them never seen before footage thanks to their tank of a vehicle that’s built to withstand the brutal weather. However, they soon find that the tornado they’ve got is only the first of many whirling funnels of death that are about to strike the town and the next one due is headed towards the school.
Soon everyone has their own issues to bear. Gary becomes obsessed with saving Donnie, who has become trapped after a twister suddenly turned the paper mill paper flat; but Allison has to try and keep Pete focused as his obsession about getting his film finished is starting to put them all in grave danger.
As some increasingly violent winds huff and puff and try to blow everything down, our progressively bedraggled group of very vulnerable humans try to find shelter until everything blows over. But with a EF-5 on the way (hint: it’s huge), does such shelter actually exist?
To be fair, for a film that has something of a clear playing field to operate in, Into The Storm never truly takes full advantage of its premise. While the concept of a disaster movie shot through the cycloptic eye of someone with a camcorder inexplicably glued constantly to their eye comes with both pros (you’re right in the midst of the action) and cons (shaky-cam could potentially be shakier than ever before), the film doesn’t really have the courage to double-down and fully embrace the medium. Thing is, for a while there I wasn’t actually sure if the movie was only partially using POV stuff, or if the filmmakers kept forgetting that they were supposed to be using it. There’s plenty of direct to the camera interviews to build character (sort of) and the film certainly gets good milage out of the Titus, a ground-clamping tornado intercept vehicle wreathed in cameras that looks like something Hobbs would drive in a Fast & Furious sequel. However, it’s lack of dedication to the bit becomes just as distracting as 90 minutes of shaky-cam could have been, and some painfully basic charactization certainly doesn’t help matters.
In fact, the characters of Into The Storm are so paper thin, it would take a light breeze, let alone a building-crushing hurricane, to utterly wipe them out. A glum looking Richard Armitage is fully in collect-the-paycheck mode as the single parent trying to keep his brooding kids in line, and the only time the actor even looks remotely invested is when he’s getting blasted in the face with overcranked wind machines. Prison Break and The Walking Dead’s Sarah Wayne Callies fares a little better playing serious den mother to her fellow storm chasers, but a sub-plot involving her anxiety about being apart from her daughter seems ripped from the pages of the Big Book Of Disaster Movie Sub-Plots, and is about as gripping as reading an auto manual.
Matt Walsh is having fun as Pete who demands that everyone should be risking their lives literally every minute in order to get the perfect shot, but he only gets to wrestle with the terrible responsibility for about two minutes before the movie impatiently moves on. The less said the better about the two drunken rednecks who plan to Jackass their way through twisters to score some cash, but I will give credit where it’s due; it takes a lot to create characters more annoying than Philip Seymore Hoffman’s Dusty from Twister – but by God, I think they’ve done it…
Into The Storm unsurprisingly fares better when it stops trying to get it’s cardboard cast to act like actual humans and has them fleeing digital carnage, and while other, older films admittedly boast better FX, there’s still some cool stuff here like a memorable death by fire tornado, or plenty of ground level shots of blustery hands of God wiping whole buildings from the face of the earth. However, I have to say that I was getting annoyed by how many times someone films a tornado while screaming the words “ARE YOU SEEING THIS!?” in disbelief. You’re a fucking storm chaser, dude, try and act like you seen a storm before.
A basic, entry level disaster movie experience, Into The Storm has precious few original ideas to float and chooses not to take full advantage of the only part of itself that’s actually striving to do something new. Maybe making a tornado chasing flick as fully found-footage wouldn’t have worked either, but it would have been nice if they’d actually tried rather than giving us the same old tired tropes of healing families and obsessed chasers. However, it’s short, inoffensive and rather bland personality is simply far too calm for a genre of film that’s supposed to rock you on your heels at every turn. For all the threat to life on display, you’ll rarely be on the edge of your seat and for all the awe-inducing climate conditions on display, you won’t exactly be blown away.
Prepare to potentially storm out with this utterly random, thowaway entry into the modern disaster movie that seems to have no real desire to do anything new or interesting. Fans of past examples of the genre may get the occasional, minor kick out of spotting the familiar tropes, but don’t expect the wind to be knocked out of you at any point.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 