Review of Into the Storm (2014) by Jesse O — 18 Dec 2014

The film has as shitty, unmemorable characters as its special effects are impressive. It's not that its special effects are truly outstanding, it's not gonna revolutionize this art form like, say, a Star Wars did back in the day.

But it does have some pretty thrilling special effects. While I doubt the film's portrayal of this massive tornado assault is entirely realistic, it pretty much does a good job at getting over the destruction these things can cause.

Of course, it does so in a greatly exaggerated manner, but it does a good job at portraying the destruction tornadoes leave in their wake. There's also one incredibly ridiculous death scene in the film.

While there is some basis of this in fact, as firenados have known to occur, even if they're not common, one of the tornadoes catches on fire due to gas spilled from a truck. One of the cameras used to film this gets sucked out of Jacob's hands.

Jacob, who was pretty much a massive pussy until this point, decides to go after the camera to get this footage. This was a very poor plan, of course, Jacob is set on fire as he gets sucked up into the tornado.

I have no idea how often this occurs, but when it DOES happen I doubt it's with such a large tornado. But that was incredibly preposterous to me. It strains credulity, but at least it made me laugh a little bit, at how insane it actually was.

If you show me something completely preposterous and it makes me laugh, then it's a little more tolerable. Unfortunately, however, the film makes waste of its special effects with some pretty horrendous, one-dimensional writing full of generic and boring characters doing nothing of interest at all.

I'm assuming that the filmmakers hoped that the special effects would serve as misdirection. Guiding you away from the weaknesses in order to focus on the film's strength. I suppose that's an admirable thing to try, hide your weaknesses and focus on your strengths, but it does so in such a sneaky manner that it doesn't really work at all.

I don't wanna say it's insulting to my intelligence, but it is a little annoying. I have no idea how the screenwriting process went, but it seems that as little effort was put into these characters and the story as is humanly possible.

I'm not saying that this was a conscious decision, it's just the way it comes across. The climax is also pretty lame. I realize how these things play out in real life, they just stop and it's as if nothing ever happened, but it just makes for a really disappointing ending for it to just.

..stop. This movie isn't realistic...at all, so for the ending to sort of adhere to something that's actually grounded in reality is a little bit inconsistent with what the film was trying to do in the first place.

Like just have one of the characters, whose names I cannot remember for the life of me, morph into a 50-foot giant and just punch the tornado to death. Why the fuck not??? It'd at least be a memorable ending.

It might not be good, but it would at least be memorable. It would also make me laugh because, outside of that stupid firenado death scene, the movie is surprisingly humorless. I suppose you could bring up those stereotypical redneck jackasses as the comedic relief.

..but no, just no. Then again I'm assuming that every attempt at true comedic relief would've just fallen flat. I can't really say much about this movie. Impressive special effects, but the writing/plotting is terrible, the characters are uninteresting, and the acting is lacking.

I don't think it's worse than Let's Be Cops, but it still is pretty awful regardless. Can't really find any reason where anyone would ever need to watch this. Maybe 30 years from now there'll be a festival of terrible and obscure movies and this will be on that list.