Review of Into the Storm (2014) by Dan H — 10 Oct 2015

A fiercely incompetent film that is clearly trying (and failing). Firstly, the film wants you to care about these characters but there are so many stories going on (There's a money/attention hungry leader of a storm chaser team, an emotionally distant father and his family, a short romance with high schoolers, and some thrill seeking drunk rednecks) and it switches between them so quickly that we are never really given the chance to connect with any one story or character (and the stories don't roll together until somewhere around the 40 minute mark), plus these aren't the most memorable characters.

I did like the character of Trey (Nathan Kress aka Freddy from Icarly), the father (Richard Armitage), and Pete the leader of the storm chasers (Matt Walsh, who is probably the best character here though he is mostly an asshole).

Secondly this is a theatrical film about several found footage films that end up mixing together, thusly there are lots of scenes that are found footage, and there are also quite a few scenes that are not.

So yeah, it gets confusing and after a while it can get hard to tell which shots are supposed to be found footage and which shots aren't. The twister scenes are fairly ok and entertaining, and the CG in these parts is decent.

This film owes A LOT to Twister, and it even makes a few small references to Twister (a flying fake cow, someone screams TRUCK!, an F5 touches down at the end). Into The Storm isn't a terrible film, but it also isn't terribly good either, which places it somewhere squarely in the MEH category.

The final stinger that runs before the credits also left a REALLY bad taste in my mouth (you could bring any character back from the dead, but you chose THOSE guys? Unrealistic and downright insulting).