To be honest I had no intentions to watch Into the Storm this weekend.  I’ve seen the trailers a couple of times and it seemed incredibly stupid to me.  But, alas, nothing else was showing and I’d rather sit through something incredibly stupid than The Trophy Wife.

Here’s my round-up of James Cameron’s go-to assistant director, Steven Quale (Final Destination 5)’s Into The Storm .

Please note that there may be spoilers.  Read at your own risk.

THE STORY:

The movie consists of three separate plot threads that eventually converge when the huge-ass hurricane hits and levels the small town of Silverton.  We have our band of storm-chasers making a documentary, led by Pete (Matt Walsh – The Hangover), armed with a repurposed tank specifially designed for tornadoes called ‘The Titan’ and a slew of camera men Daryl (Arlen Escarpeta – Friday the 13th), Jacob (Jeremy Sumpter – Peter Pan) and Lucas (Lee Whittaker – Fast Five).   Pete’s team has been on a dry spell, quite literally, thanks to the ineptitude of his hired metereologist Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies – The Walking Dead).  Tensions are running high as their funding has just been pulled and it is more crucial than ever for them to get that million-dollar shot in the middle of a tornado vortex.

Then we have Gary (Richard Armitage – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug), a single parent struggling to balance his responsibilities as the assistant principal of Silverton High and dealing with his two teenaged kids Donnie (Max Deacon – I, Anna) and Trey (Nathan Kress – iCarly).  Adding to the stress is the upcoming graduation, which Donnie is in charge of filming but gets distracted when his dream girl of forever, Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam Carey – At the Tatooist), asks for his help on a project.
Finally we have the town idiots, Donk (Kyle Davis – The Hitcher) and Reevis (Jon Reep – Rodney), who are just in it for the fun and the possibility of recording something that can get them a million hits on Youtube.

THE GOOD:

1. The sound effects were especially brilliant.  I loved how they captured the sound of metal groaning, trying to resist being torn apart by the howling winds.  If you will shell out money for this movie, make sure that you see it in a theater with a decent sound system.
2. Richard Armitage.  I literally did not recognize him until half way through; he was so tall and damn, all lines.  His booming voice really helped in providing some semblance of depth and the much needed urgency to the film’s overall tone.  While there’s no doubt that he could have done much better, his presence was still a lot of help in providing a little bit of humanity to a bunch of generic characters.
3. Pete as a character.  In a movie full of bleh characters, Pete stood out because he had a goal and he was willing to do everything to reach it.
4. Nathan Kress!!!  Great comedic timing from this kid, it was nuts.  He also managed to switch seamlessly from angsty and funny in three seconds or less, which, from a Nickelodeon child star, is pretty mind blowing stuff.
5. No romance.  Thank God.  Hollywood’s been on a roll lately with choosing to forgo cheesy romantic crap.  While there was the mandatory eye-roll-inducing attempts at flirting, nothing ever comes to fruition.

THE BAD:

1. Max Deacon.  He looks like Harry Potter but with worse acting prowess.  There’s something to be said about an actor’s talents when his most memorable scene was when he was (thought to be) dead.
2. There was no real tension.  Sure there was a giant mofo of a tornado threatening to kill everyone, but because the destruction only focused on property damage, there was no real fear for anybody dying.  I don’t think they even showed one single dead body on screen, now that I think about it.  Even when somebody actually ended up dead, there was no real impact.
3. General story-telling sloppiness.  There was a point in the film when one of the characters (Lucas the camera man) literally disappeared from the screen.  There was no explanation where he had gone.  One minute he was holding a camera and by the time they all jumped into a van, he was gone.  Did they leave him out there to die?

THE UGLY:

1. The stupid crappy and worn out ‘footage’ technique .  It wouldn’t even have workes had they done it properly but because the treatment of the technique was sloppy, the effect was especially bad.  They didn’t even bother sustaining it until the end of the movie; it felt like an after thought when they tried to bring it back in the end.  I could almost hear the film makers say ‘oh, shit, we totally forgot about all of the cameras’.
2. Unexplained giant tornadoes.  I get that this was just an over indulgent preaching against global warming, I really do.  But was any of of it based on sound science?  I live in a tropical country where we deal more with storms than hurricanes or tornadoes, but do they really just appear out of nowhere?  Do they reall form mere meters away from each other?
3. Donk and Reevis and the actors portraying them.  It is clear that the only reason they were in this movie was because they must be close personal friends with the director.  There’s just no other explanation for including all of their scenes when the movie would have benefitted greatly had those scenes been cut.

All in all Into the Storm was a fun movie to watch, in a mindless sort of way.  If you don’t mind lackluster performances from most of the cast but appreciate great special and sound effects of material things being destroyed by mother nature, then this is the perfect movie for you.

THE VERDICT: 4.5/10. Skip.

*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.