Into The Storm

Starring: Sarah Wayne Callies, Richard Armitage, Matt Walsh
Directed By: Steven Quale
Reviewed by Brendan Dousi

[Rating: 1.5/5]

You remember Twister, right? I think that film has been burned into our collective consciousness by how many times it was unapologetically re-run by various stations all throughout the late 90s/early 00s. It would seem, apparently, that we are due for another foray into frantic and unpredictable weather patterns with this year’s Into The Storm. Will it reach Twister’s lofty heights in our collective nostalgia-brain or will it utterly fail to blow us all away?

Into The Storm follows a group of storm-hunters (sound familiar?) consisting of data analyst Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies), documentarian Pete (Matt Walsh) and a couple of other disposable tornado-fodder as they race across the southern states trying to get footage for Pete’s reality show. Nearby Vice-Principal Gary (Richard Armitage) conducts a high-school graduation, enlisting his two sons to help film it; unrelenting jokester Trey (Nathan Kress) and long-suffering eldest Donnie (Max Deacon). Sick of trying to live up to his father’s expectations, Donnie decides to skip the ceremony and help long-time crush Kaitlyn (Alicia Debnam Carey) re-shoot a missing assignment in a dilapidated abandoned factory for plot reasons. Naturally, a series of devastatingly destructive tornadoes start to rip apart the state and everyone is caught right in the middle of it.

This film has its problems, that’s for sure. From the extremely average acting to the kind of dodgy CGI on some of the Tornados, this film feels like it would belong more on the SyFy channel lodged between Sharknado and Piranhaconda. The only thing really setting this film apart is that it isn’t knowingly trashy like a SyFy channel movie would be. This film is trying really hard to take itself seriously, from the gigantic set-pieces and devastation to the exceedingly tried ‘Found Footage’ style of shooting. The film even tries to shoe-horn in a “This is probably because of Global Warming” pseudo-message somewhere in the first act. Characters act inconsistently and any sense of character progression feels forced. This film is almost blatantly trying to be Twister that the only real thing that sets it apart is a couple of teenagers and shooting-style that lacks any and all substance.

This all said, it’s not an unenjoyable film. There’s almost a tantalising satisfaction here that you get from knowing they were trying to make a serious film out of this and are failing miserably. Not all performances are bad, too, Sarah Wayne Callies and Richard Armitage actually pull off quite fine performances but are constantly struggling not to be bogged down by the other cast members. And, when all else fails, there’s a lot of destruction here and some pretty neat set-pieces. Fire-tornado, guys. Fire-tornado.

I would not recommend this film if you were expecting anything substantial from this cinema-going experience. I would, however, give you the all clear if you just wanted to watch some fairly entertaining trash while belly-laughing into bucket of popcorn. Into The Storm fails at almost everything it sets out to do, but in such a glorious way that it’s actually pretty entertaining.