Review of Into the Storm (2014) by Guillermobm — 13 Jan 2016

The tornado sequences are somewhat thrilling, but the writing is awful, and its found-footage format is confusing and unnecessary. 16/100 [D-].

The film starts well, the opening scene was just fine, even though since here you can realize how bad is the script. The first act begins with a guy recording with his camera and talking about stuff that nobody actually cares. This annoying guy called Donnie keeps talking about random stuff and introducing more characters such as: his dad performed Richard Armitage and his brother played by Nathan Kress. This whole character-development thing was boring and badly done. I almost fell asleep watching this. Give me some tornadoes! The good news is that when the film starts to deliver, it kind of delivers. Anyway, while I waiting for some tornadoes, there were some stupid gags and supposed-to-be-funny moments that were actually not so funny.

Its second act is not that bad, the first tornado scenes were short but all of them are quite edgy, but the found-footage was very confusing to me. It was difficult to know the difference between the found-footage scenes and the normal ones. Steven Quale directed the action sequences with energy and thinking about his audience. However, it is sad that Quale does not give a crap about the characters and the script. Near the end of the second act, there is an apology scene at the most purest style of The Blair Witch Project, it was so boring and ineffective. I literally fell asleep because it was so cheesy. I just can not believe that Quale directed this crap. It was instantly forgettable to me. After leaving the theater, I completely forgot the film.

As you can see in the trailer, there is an awesome fire tornado in the movie but this one is wasted by the stupid characters and the atrocious screenplay. This whole sequence could be epic, but the awful direction, CGI and script ruined it. The whole firenado sequence was visually good at first, but the director ruined it, you will see how. The final act contains a short, but mildly good looking F5 tornado sequence. This scene as you can see in the trailer, shows an airport being destroyed, trailers and cars flying through the sky, etc. I liked it and it was enjoyable to see, especially on a huge screen. Moving on, near the end some characters were in peril, but you know exactly what is going to happen. The movie was predictable and did not dare to do something different or surprising.

The characters were uninteresting and stupid. Some of them were painfully annoying. A perfect example is "Reevis" (performed by Jon Reep), and "Donk" (performed by Kyle Davis). Both were unnecessary and their lines were so damn idiotic. Who the hell wrote this? Even though Richard Armitage's character "Gary" was a nice presence, and Sarah Wayne Callies was generally good as "Allison", the atrocious script ruined them both. Overall the performances were decent, but my main problem here is the horrible script and the weak characterization. My conclusion is that the tornado sequences were somewhat enjoyable, but the writing and the characters were not interesting enough to keep me engaged.