Movie Review: Into the Storm

Pretty cool poster I guess..

From IMDB :

“In the span of a single day, the town of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones, even as storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come. Most people seek shelter, while others run towards the vortex, testing how far a storm chaser will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot.” – early rating of 6.2/10

What  this Stormchaser wannabe thinks?

First off when i heard about this movie i didn’t think much of it. Saw the trailer and thought it would be just another disaster flick, maybe even another one like The Day After Tomorrow or 2012. So i was expecting a halfway decent movie with pretty cool visual effects. I didn’t know that the director for this movie was the director for Final Destination 5 (which i didn’t see, didn’t want to see). I also didn’t know that Richard Armitage who plays Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit Trilogies was in it.

 You spend a fair bit of time lookinh through this guys camera

So to start off let’s talk visuals or camera work. They’ve decided to rely heavily on the first person view or documentary view for most of the scenes involving the cast. So think Cloverfield or any war movie or battle scene in any movie lately. There’s lots of shaky camera work and you hear a fair bit of dialogue at times without seeing who is actually talking. Doesn’t really do much for me.

This is nit even half of all the characters you'll see

Cast of characters. There’s just too many. You get just the shallowest look into their backgrounds, if any. Because of this you basically don’t give too much of a damn for any of the characters. They’re like props to propel the story forward. Which is sad especially for Richard Armitage, the man is just fresh off The Hobbit movies and he gets into a role that any second string actor would be able to do just as well. As for the other cast of characters? Well they mostly come from TV shows or have just played bit parts in other movies so you don’t know them and you don’t expect much from their performance. Which is sad since a chance to star in a big movie should have given them a chance to show their acting chops. I was probably only impressed with the kid that plays Donnie in that scene where he does a camera confession when he thinks he was going to drown. Other than that it was all meh.

On a side note i did spend the whole time trying to see Thorin Oakenshield in the Gary Morris character that Richard Armitage plays. You can hear Thorin’s voice but without the make-up it’s hard to believe that Gary is also Thorin. So kudos to the make-up team on The Hobbit.

 Yes it may seem like an emotional scene but you don't feel it

Plot of the movie? Other than chasing storms around or running from them there doesn’t seem to be much of a plot. Sure the dad played by Richard Armitage is on a mission to save his son but for some reason you don’t sense his urgency or panic or fear or anything. Love interest? There usually is some sort of love interest or emotional conflict of sorts in every movie. This one not so much. Yeah the teenage son gets into trouble when he tries to impress the girl but you don’t really feel it. Dad’s emotional state for his kids? Don’t feel it. You don’t feel like there’s any conflict or emotion at all actually. I’ve been more emotionally invested in a National Geographic documentary than in this movie or it’s cast of characters.

Humour. Yes there’s an attempt at humour in the guise of 2 yokels who are in a quest to be famous youtubers by recording themselves doing stupid things and chasing after the storms and tornadoes but it doesn’t work. It muddles up the whole flow and feel of the movie.

This does look cool

The storm and tornado effects are possibly the only thing that seems to be pretty cool and decent. They do look impressive. I only remember one other movie where the focus was on storm chasing and that was the 1996 movie Twister with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. It has improved from those early days of CGI for sure but i think it some ways they’ve taken the advantage of CGI advancement too far. Sometime it just doesn’t look logical. Impressive yes but logical no. Especially when you see the characters walk around nice and slow or just stand there when there’s a howling tornado less than a hundred meters from them and everything around them is being picked up and flung around. In one scene you see Gary the dad holding on to dear life to a car while also holding on to someone who’s floating up because of the suction and the next you see them just standing and staring at it when it’s clearly the same distance from the tornado. What gives?

This was a pretty cool

To sum it up. This was not a good movie. Remember when i mentioned The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and Twister? Those were better. Much better. They’re not perfect but compared to this train wreck they win hands down. But then again what could you expect from a director of something like Final Destination 5? A movie that only appealed to a select group of movie fans. Mostly horror fans and teens of course. They are pretty easy to please from what i can gather. Go watch this movie if you’ve watched everything else at the cinema worth watching and you desperately have nothing to do and have too much movie. Watch this movie if you’re a student of visual effects interested in creating tornadoes. Watch this movie only if you’re a hardcore fan of weather and stormchasing and you don’t have anything better to do. If not, then don’t.

If you want a decent tornado movie with a little science this is my recommendation. And it’s an award winning one too.

THANK YOU NUFFNANG FOR THE PREVIEW PASSES!! THANK YOU TGV, YOU MAH FAVRIT CINEMA!

P.S. NUFFNANG DON'T think badly of me for being honest and reduce my chances of getting future premier and preview passes