“Sir, I’ve
studied storms all my life and this is the biggest storm that has ever been!” Yes,
this is an actual, serious line from Into the Storm… No, I don’t really know
what to think of it either. Is it hilarious? I certainly think so. Is it so
stupid it makes your head hurt from how hard your eyes just rolled? Absolutely
it is. Is it awesome? I’m not sure how to answer that one, but one thing I do
know is that from this one quotation, you can infer everything you need to know
about this motion picture, for better or worse.
Into the
Storm is yet another cheaply-made horror/action flick, this time from our
friends over at New Line Cinema and Warner Brothers, and yet another in a long line of misguided
found-footage films. Why this movie was turned into a found-footage project is
beyond me as it seems like even the director and/or cinematographer aren’t
really thrilled about the idea themselves. Although the film starts out like
many other found-footage films (some annoying character you don’t care about is
doing some really “amateur” filming on their home digital cam of other
characters you don’t care about) it quickly departs from this, but more on that
later.
Into the
Storm is a very simple movie; if you love the idea of seeing a relatively small
town getting torn to shreds then this movie was made for you. However, if the
idea of seeing the world’s largest (fake) storm on screen doesn’t excite you,
you’re most likely better off skipping this one altogether.
On a
positive note, the tornadoes are pretty impressive and the action is appropriately
intense for any action junkies looking to get their fix, however, there’s no
real substance to this story no matter how hard the movie tries to make us
care. Honestly, I think this is partially to blame on the over-abundance of
characters in the movie, there’s simply too many people to keep track off in
this one, and not enough reason to want to (and not nearly enough people die in
the storm either).
The premise
to this film is as simple as it gets and the characters are just so utterly
forgettable (Lori from Walking Dead is in this, for some reason) that I’m just
going to focus on the bafflingly inconstant camera work in this one. From the
very beginning we’re introduced to this movie as a found-footage style picture,
and of course all of the normal inconsistencies that typically plague this
genre follow (why is there professional lighting in the living room? How are we
getting cinema-grade quality from a Panasonic handheld? Who films people
talking about such boring stuff? Etc.) but Into the Storm goes a step further
once the storm hits. It seems as if the filmmakers are barely even trying to
suspend disbelief on this one (cameras still work after being drowned in water?
Ok then) several times there are shots and angles that range from impractical
to impossible; in one instance, both a camera man and his camera are sucked
into a fiery tornado and we see all of this footage. How? Was it found later in
a grassy field? Was he live-streaming from his camera? (I don’t think so and it
was never mentioned if he was) Perhaps the storm nicely returned it later. This
isn’t the only instance of something like this happening, but it’s probably the
most noticeable one. At a certain point, I just had to stop pretending this was
any sort of “found-footage” and chalk it up as the film’s “style” just to
prevent myself from being so distracted by the implausibility of it all.
Once the giant
storm itself hits, that’s when things really get crazy (and people still manage
to keep a firm grip on their cameras). This twister is unlike anything you’ve
ever seen (because it’s like the biggest thing ever, remember?) it looks like
at least a dozen large tornadoes put together, probably more and it certainly
seems menacing in nature. So where do our brave heroes hide from the most biggest
storm there ever was? (Minor Spoilers) A storm drain. That’s right the biggest
storm of the century (which by the way tore apart the entire school and storm
shelter) couldn’t even take out a simple storm drain (End of Minor Spoilers).
Of course,
once it’s all over everyone learns a valuable lesson (even the school jock who
appears at the beginning and then at the end and leaves us wondering why he
even appeared at all) which is that family is important and storms are super
dangerous, but awesome.
One final
note: this storm hits the entire town completely unawares (they’re having a
high school graduation when it hits for crying out loud) and my one question is
this: how in the world does the “biggest storm that has ever been” just drop
out of the sky without one single meteorologist even issuing so much as a
tornado warning? The film attempts to explain this away by implying that the
storm is just really tricky, but I have to believe in this day and age the town
would at least be expecting more than a little rain. Then again, perhaps I’m just
thinking this over too much, obviously more than the filmmakers ever did.
-Ryan Maples
Rating: 4.5
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