FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
Story image
Super Freak Tornado Movie? Sounds ah-mazing. Wrong
Tue, 4th Nov 2014
FYI, this story is more than a year old

“Worst movie I have ever seen. Except Green Lantern”, my sister said as we slogged through the disaster that is Into the Storm.

I love disaster films. Anything that shows end of the world catastrophe combined with freak forces of nature pretty much means I am all in. And I know that disaster films are not ‘respected'or ‘good', but for those of us who love the genre, there are definitely good and bad disaster films. Twister, Day After Tomorrow = good. Dante's Peak, 2012, Poseidon = bad. Into the Storm = bad.

Directed by Steven Quale, written by John Swetnam, Into the Storm follows a group of tornado hunters and some high school kids and their dad as parts of Oklahoma are devastated by freak tornado storms, including one big massive tornado that is formed when two separate big massive tornados join together. No, seriously.

The movie is a combination of normal footage and ‘found footage' – where parts of the film is seen via footage shot from characters' cameras and phones.

At this point I would tell you about the characters, but there might as well not have been any. I can't remember any of their names, or what they looked like, except that pretty girl from The Walking Dead and Prison Break (was still not good though, soz).

What made films like Twister and Day After Tomorrow good disaster films was the character development and quality supporting characters (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Dusty anyone). The characters in Into the Storm had no development, no chemistry, you knew who would die right from the start, there was a token black guy (really?!) and both the female leads needed their male counterparts to save them at some point (reallyt?!?!).

Similar to Twister, the tornado chasers just happened to be on the exact road the tornado decided to hit. Unlike Twister, it wasn't awesome. The vehicles the storm chasers were in were so close to the tornado, yet hair didn't even seem to blow in the wind. And at one point, the tornado was strong enough to pick up a barn and blow it into a million little pieces, but not strong enough to lift a crappy van off the road? Um, ok.

Disappointed, is all I can say.

1.5/5