Into the Storm *Snap Judgement* (2014)

Review

"Grab a broom. It's like a zombie apocalypse out here." - Reevis

Oklahoma and four teenagers are killed one evening in their car when they don't get out of the way of a tornado in time, which has nothing to do with nearby Silverton, a small rural community just about to celebrate the local high school graduation. Nothing is going to stop that event, though Vice Principal Gary is worried about the inclement weather and whether his two sons, Donnie and Trey, can handle capturing the ceremony on film for future enlightenment. Naturally the approaching storm front is going to have the last word, with a series of tornadoes crashing the graduation speech.

Out in the field Peter and his team of "storm chasers" are hunting the elusive shoot that will make the money spent on Peter's crusade viable. He has lost funding and is paying for things out of his own pocket, though PHD qualified climatologist Allison can inform him that an unprecedented two storm fronts are converging on Silverton, bringing with them the mother of all tornadoes. With Donnie trapped in an abandoned factory, don't ask, VP Gary is out in the field himself as the town is ripped apart by a series of tornadoes, but the one to rule them all is about to make a quest appearance.

Okay let's get the bad out of the way first, this isn't a good movie, it isn't going to win any Oscars, its derivative, but it has honking big tornadoes. In simplistic terms if Twister (1996) had of been shot as a food footage flick with less interesting characters and a script that would appear to have been written by someone's ginger headed cousin in their uncle's basement then you would have ended up with Into The Storm. The movie is contrived, never manages to surprise the audience, and has plotlines plucked whole from previous outings without an attempt to acknowledge the source. Having said that I rocked on out to the 90 odd minutes running time and was engaged enough to have some fun times waiting on the next climatic monster to hit the screen. Did I care about the characters, oh hell no, this movie was all about the CGI and on that front it delivered like a wild night up the Cross.

Director Steven Quale kicks things off with four teenagers hanging out in Buttwipe Oklahoma who run afoul of a tornado one evening. Pretty cool hiding of the twister; we see it via electricity explosions approaching the teens' car until the final moment when Quale shows the climatic creature to startling effect. Naturally since they are American teens the car load of victims are filming everything right up till the tornado claims its victims. This prologue is then referenced in a later scene during our main event and then promptly dropped. We get it Quale, tornadoes kill people caught in their path, you didn't need to underline the point then highlight it in flashing neon. Weather is bad and it's coming for our characters in much the same way as the shark in Jaws 2 pretty much fulfils the role of the slasher antagonist, sans mask of cause. If Into The Storm is anything then it's a monster movie with Mother Nature taking on the role of evil incarnate.

We next cut to Vice Principal Gary who is trying to raise his two rebellious sons following the death of his wife in a car accident. While Quale is no doubt trying to raise the spectre of Gary still grieving for his wife and hence missing all the signals that he is losing his sons, that proves to be a bridge too far and Gary simply comes across as a work obsessed control freak. Did I mention all the characters are pretty disposable and not developed beyond the card board cut out stage? Anyways come the time come the man as Gary reconnects with his sons through the trials and tribulations the biggest storm front to ever hit Oklahoma presents. As the town is systematically destroyed Gary comes to a greater realisation blah blah blah. Was this shite written by Disney? Director Quale is fumbling on the sidelines as the audience groans through what passes for character development in this flick, using the term "character development" in its widest possible meaning btw.

Writer John Swetnam, who is not going to be the next big thing in U.S literature, then introduces the comedic element for the evening in Donk and Reevis who managed to irritate the hell out of me. The pair are rednecks who film Reevis doing stunts devised by Donk in order to get better ratings on Youtube.com. They are in their element as the storm descends and proceeds to destroy anything Reevis hasn't previously smashed during one of his ill-informed stunts. Thankfully they are whisked off by a tornado before the audience decide burning down the cinema would be a better use of its time than actually sitting through a flick that has pacing issues.

Swetnam does get one clever line in, hey he's not batting a thousand in 90 odd minutes here team, as Reevis ensures the audience is rocking to Lori Grimes from The Walking Dead as climatologist Allison, no one has surnames in the U.S heartland y'all, a member of Pete's storm chasing ragtag band. It's about here I was thinking Twister and was kind of hoping Helen Hunt would make a surprise appearance. Anyways like the team in Twister our crew are low on funds, are running with home built equipment, but at least don't have to deal with other chasers. Oh I should mention Allison has a five year old at home, apparently named "Bug", but since the character is poorly defined we don't really care about her or her co-workers who fit various labelled boxes.

So our three separate groups of individuals are drawn together as the storm front, which apparently is focusing on Silverton - a small community with a massive airport, gets steady worse. We're talking hail the size of golf balls, multiple tornadoes, and finally a massive one that no one has ever seen the like of before, yadda yadda. And yes it pretty much follows the script Twister threw down except without the love interest or anything remotely engaging beyond the awesome tornado computer work.

Pretty much finished here, the movie falls into the "found footage" basket, although at least the amateur film makers here have camera stabilisers, no shaky cam, and are fully backed up by a professional camera crew - some of the shots are clearly not taken by any of the cameras in use. The dialogue is shockingly bad, there are no surprises coming at you, and the destruction wrought via CGI is replaced toward the end of the movie with actual footage of tornado devastation. For no apparent reason writer Swetnam drops in an environmental message from time to time, but drops it whenever it might impact the "action" scenes.

Okay so a disaster movie, I had to go catch it down my local multiplex where surprisingly the audience were from older demographics than I might have expected. I pretty much knew I wasn't going to be catching great cinema so the movie didn't disappoint, but then again it didn't surprise either. The movie is worth catching on the big screen for the twisters, but don't expect anything new or any attempt to explain the human condition. If you dig disaster flicks then this one may work for you, I'd wait till the DVD and then make a night of it with John Snow versus the Volcano. Which reminds me, neither New York nor Boredwood have been destroyed in a disaster movie recently, what's that about?