Movie Review: INTO THE STORM

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Let me preface this review. I remember seeing the teaser for this film with audiences a few months ago (maybe as early as May). While the teaser played with ominous text about how you cannot prepare with brief glimpses of destruction, the only thing that happened after the teaser was over was laughter. Not a good sign. Twister 2: Found Footage is even something I started calling the film. However, I figured I’d give it a go since the director, Steven Quale, directed Final Destination 5, which corrected the problems I had with the two entries prior to it and I felt that it wrapped up the series pretty well. Also the other tie-in is that Sarah Wayne Callies, Lori Grimes from The Walking Dead, is in the film.My expectations for Into the Storm were low but I figured maybe there would be some decent scenes.

Into the Storm focuses on a group of storm chasers that are trying to pick up the pieces of their failed attempt at capturing a previous storm that rolled through the Midwest. Meanwhile, a teenager named Donnie, who just happens to be in the high school’s A/V club and documents everything, is getting ready to film the high school’s graduation ceremony while juggling to be less socially awkward.

For most of the film, we get the storm chasers tracking a storm as it moves through counties and later becomes the biggest f’n tornado ever seen. The other portion of the film, intercut with the storm chaser story, is Donnie trying to help out his crush reshoot footage for some project – which isn’t really explained. The stories converge and rescue sequences are deployed.

Into the Storm is nothing new by any means. The special effects are decent but there really isn’t anything to captivate you to keep watching. I had some hope when one of the twisters touches down and becomes a spiral of fire & wind and not only sucks up a character but burns him while doing so. The camera doesn’t shy away from it either. The film doesn’t really venture into this territory again but it plants a seed of how cool it would be to essentially see a slasher film with forces of nature. The only other scene here worth noting is the climax where someone is sucked up into the eye of the storm and is put above the funnel cloud only to crash hard while the camera stays with him the whole time.

Needless to say, Into the Storm feels like a demo film for your surround sound or something that might be best watching at home when you are killing time. One thing is for certain, this film would have been better if they included “Humans Being” from Van Halen.

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