Into the Storm.

Review #1708: Into the Storm.

Cast: 

Richard Armitage (Gary Fuller), Sarah Wayne Callies (Allison Stone), Matt Walsh (Peter "Pete" Moore), Max Deacon (Donnie Fuller), Alycia Debnam-Carey (Kaitlyn Johnston), Nathan Kress (Trey Fuller), Arlen Escarpeta (Daryl Karley), Jeremy Sumpter (Jacob Hodges), Lee Whittaker (Lucas Guerrette), Kyle Davis (Donk), and Jon Reep (Reevis) Directed by Steven Quale.

Review: 

Seven years since its release, there is one question that persists since the release of the film: Hey, remember Twister? Now, maybe that isn't a fair question, because that film (released eighteen years prior) was a dumb movie. Granted, it was a wonderfully dumb spectacle movie, but one will generally remember what they saw out of that film with its "offbeat" characters when paired with the destruction created on screen. Honestly, with the found footage angle, it kind of reminds me of a demo reel for VFX, complete with the bare minimum of personality in the characters. Heck, going around shaking the camera a bit while a disaster happens sounds like something you could do with a bit of liquid courage. Now hey, this isn't exactly a first outing for Quale. A former second unit director, he made his first Hollywood film with Final Destination 5 (2011). 

Look, you know it isn't great, and I know it isn't great. Giving whole paragraphs about why it is such a generic movie would probably waste your time as well as the time that could be spent watching better films. So yes, one could go with the easy out that it is a bland disaster movie that rides all of its chips on the spectacle and nothing else - ah, but could you just watch the movie just for the effects and ignore the rest for 89 minutes? Eh...not really. It tries to balance its two subplots with the bare minimum, and the only thing it succeeds on is with two supporting characters that are played for comic relief. The storm chasing angle isn't even familiar enough to make me go out and compare to Twister, because you won't remember much about it to argue the point, and the family angle is here and there.in all of the slim trimmings; the narrative just can't handle the first-person perspective of the camera, because that stuff only really worked with disaster fare like Cloverfield. This is basically a lesser version of The Blair Witch Project (1999), filled with character you can't care about enough to do anything other than a mild turn on one's face for an expression (i.e., a "hmm" look).  So yeah, the characters are blah and it would be hard for a great actor to make great meat out of it. At least they try, more so for Armitage and Walsh, really. Everyone can basically be summed with a phrase anyway, such as "the one obsessed with work", or "the horny kid", or "the family person needing to go home", "the scrub", and so on. Davis and Reep play the "daredevil" comic relief, and really that seems more interesting to see when it comes to them making dumb videos about it than anything else, if only because it reminds me of when I thought about doing dumb videos for the Internet. Predictability is almost like a protein for this film, one that basically projects what is going to happen before it happens, and it isn't worth the frustrations or too many sentences. The effects are good, but that should always be the case when it comes to the art of creating tornadoes on computers without spending as much as the aforementioned twister film. I guess it depends how much one wants to spend time seeing movie houses and schools get rocked by the wind as opposed to hearing about it on television or from folks in the areas for it (of course, a fire whirl is certainly something I wouldn't want to see...ever). As a whole, if you need an effects show to gaze a bit or something to go to sleep and you don't have Twister, maybe, maybe, maybe this could work; I can't give it a recommendation at all, but I can't despise it very much either.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.