“Into the Storm” Lives Up to its Title

Without question, Steven Quale’s Into the Storm makes its
intentions known from the first as the opening scene features four teenagers
being killed by a rogue tornado while trapped in a car. More a thrill ride than
a movie, time-wasting elements like character development and narrative
complexity are blown to the wayside as the intent of this film is to put the
audience in the middle of a massive storm, nothing more.  To his credit, Quale and his digital effect
crew succeed in doing just that as the movie’s throbbing, wind-driven
soundtrack rattles your bones and any screenings done with the new D-Box motion
seats would truly be an immersive cinematic experience. 

And while there’s little in the way of plot…well, I guess
you can’t have everything.  What story
there is concerns a team of storm-chasers led by the driven but boorish team
leader Pete (Matt Walsh), who’s about to lose his funding if he and his three
cameramen don’t get some up-close-and-personal footage of a tornado real quick.  They’ve been saddled with Allison (Sarah
Wayne Callies), a well-meaning meteorologist who’s had a streak of bad luck
where predicting where storms will hit is concerned. However, she’s spotting a
massive cell heading towards the midwestern town of Silverton so she and the
Titus Research Team head there in order to intercept it.

Meanwhile, the high school there is getting ready for their
graduation ceremony where Gary (Richard Armitage), the only administrator there
with any common sense wants to cancel the festivities.  His sons Donnie (Max Deacon) and Trey (Nathan
Kress) are more than enough for him to handle, especially since his wife has
died.  This is going to be small potatoes
once the perfect storm bears down on Silverton and all of their lives are
changed forever.

Quale employs a found-footage approach so the movie is
supposedly composed of different segments of video from various sources.  So, at any given time, someone has a
video-making device in his or her hand and for the most part their purpose for
filming is legitimate.  Donnie and Trey
have been assigned to make video entries for a time capsule project, the Titus’
team’s mobile tank has 24 cameras mounted around it and idiot, adrenaline
junkies Donk (Kyle Davis) and Reevis (Jon Reep), whose lives consist of filming
themselves doing stupid stunts so they can be posted on YouTube are never far
away from some recording device.  For the
most part, this is an effective approach as it provides a logical excuse for
Quale to get the audience in the middle of the action where a large portion of
the film’s action takes place.

These various amateur videographers capture the wholesale
destruction of Silverton, which is rendered quite realistically though some of
what occurs during it defies all logic.  The
tornado that Quale conjures is so large that it’s as if a category five
hurricane was tearing across the plains, picking jumbo jets up in the air and
tossing them about like toys. Credit this meteorological hyperbole to
overzealous screenwriter John Swetnam who uses global warming as a handy excuse
to explain this mother of all storms.

Like all disaster films, presenting natural calamities for
the purpose of entertainment is morally questionable especially when what’s
portrayed on screen is realistic in nature. 
That being the case, Into the Storm is certainly not everyone’s cup of
tea and will only appeal to those who, but for the grace of God, have lived one
step removed from the tragedies presented on screen.  

This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2014.