Into the Storm

Into the storm is a 2014 film about a team of tornado chasers/documentary filmmakers who are about to come across the storm of the century. It's a lot like 1996's Twister except with none of the charm, a bad script, and worse actors.

The film takes place out in Silverton, Oklahoma. The first characters introduced are a single father named Gary and his two sons Trey and Donnie. The sons are supposed to be filming a "video time capsule" as a school project, which is a lazy way to make sure some of the characters have cameras on them for the found-footage sections of the movie. The second group of characters are the storm chasers. They consist of a meteorologist, a documentary filmmaker and some camera operators. It may seem like I'm breezing past all of the characters but, the film doesn't seem too concerned with giving them any depth so there isn't much to say. 

The first 25 minutes of this movie is a slog to get through, but once some tornadoes start touching down it does pick up the pace. Of course the Silverton High School graduation happens to fall on the same day that massive F5 tornadoes hit the small Oklahoma town, thus bringing all of the actors to the same location. After that, it hits all of the usual disaster movie beats you'd expect. Before the first twister had even touched down I had correctly predicted every character who was going to live to the end of the film. That's not to say many other disaster flicks aren't predictable but, nothing in this one felt original. As for some positives, despite the stilted acting and formulaic plot, the visual effects were a bit better than I expected. The CGI wasn't amazing but it was good enough that I could still get drawn into the latter half of the film.

Overall, I didn't really like this movie but it wasn't frustratingly bad either. 

I'll give Into the Storm a 1.5 out of 5.

A Look Back At Twister

Today I decided to take a look back at 1996's Twister. A film that had a domestic gross of over $240 million and was second that year only to Independence Day at the box-office. In '96 this movie was a big deal.

The plot is pretty straight forward; Bill Harding (played by Bill Paxton) travels to meet up with his estranged wife/storm-chasing meteorologist Jo (played by Helen Hunt) to pick up some divorce papers. Once Bill meets up with her and his former team of tornado researchers, he is quickly pulled back into storm-chasing. Wanting to see the DOROTHY research device he designed in action, Bill and his new fiancée Melissa (played by Jamie Gertz) tag along with the team to chase down a couple of twisters. Predictably, Jo and Bill start to reconnect and this, coupled with a few close calls with some tornados, causes Melissa to call off her and Bill's engagement. By the end of he film, Jo and Bill are able to successfully launch the DOROTHY device into an F5 tornado, gather a bunch of data, and presumably live happily ever after... or they died in a twister related incident after the events of this film. Who's to say?

Now, I have always had a bit of a soft-spot for disaster films (just in the past few months I've written entries about Earthquake, Airport '77, and The Poseidon Adventure) and Twister is no different. It's a flawed movie, with some laughable writing, and hammy acting. On the flip side though, it was nominated and even won several awards for special effects and sound mixing and in that regard, the film holds up pretty well for being nearly 25 years old. 

Has the movie gotten better with age like a fine wine? No, but if you're just looking for a straightforward, entertaining, popcorn flick then I think this one still gets the job done.
 3 out of 5