Into the Storm

The days of found footage films dwelling solely in the domain of horror have long since passed, the gimmick of purporting to piece together a tale from in-narrative video recordings now traversing other genres. Monsters (Cloverfield), superheroes (Chronicle), cops (End of Watch) and wayward teens (Project X) have each earned an outing, as has family fare (Earth to Echo) and science fiction (Europa Report) – and the list keeps growing. Into the Storm endeavours to take the Paranormal Activity route to add the disaster movie to their ranks.

Befitting an effort with a title that says it all, the feature’s plot is as simple as the concept, as three groups in the town of Silverton, Oklahoma fall victim to the whims of an extreme weather event. Everyone has a camera firmly in hand, of course, to chronicle nature’s destructive mayhem. High school student Donnie (Max Deacon, TV’s Hatfields & McCoys) is filming for a time capsule project with the assistance of his younger brother Trey (Nathan Kress, iCarly), though their vice principal father, Gary (Richard Armitage, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug), is less enthused. Veteran storm chaser Pete (Matt Walsh, Veep) wants to revitalise his career by recording the eye of the storm, but has little faith in the meteorologist, Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies, The Walking Dead), along for the ride. Local drunken louts Donk (Kyle Davis, Enlisted) and Reevis (Jon Reep, Eastbound and Down) chase the carnage in their beat-up pick-up truck, looking for YouTube fame and fortune.

To detail Into the Storm’s cookie-cutter characters making bad decisions is to give them more prominence than the film itself does courtesy of writer John Swetnam (Step Up All In) cartoonish script, with the existence of so many blandly portrayed people amid the noise and fury of rain and wind merely a means to an end. First and foremost, their presence justifies the feature’s stylistic choice and intermittent use of a first-person perspective, off-screen a consequence of a limited budget and an attempt to straddle the line between Twister and Sharknado. A sizeable cast also provides plenty fodder to go flying into the skies, and numbers to whittle down in pursuit of the requisite body count. Further, it affords the scantest trace of a shoehorned-in emotional angle, borne of the usual against-the-odds father-son bonding, maternal yearning and feats of sacrifice.

It takes a surprisingly significant amount of time for someone to remark ‘this is the biggest tornado I’ve ever seen’; however no other phrase in the wealth of dialogue espousing exposition or stating the obvious so aptly summarises Into the Storm’s existence. That director Steven Quale last helmed Final Destination 5 gives an indication of his preference for smashing things together, sadly sans any of the horror film franchise’s B-movie leanings or comedy. Cars, trucks and planes are whisked up in turrets of wind, buildings crumble like straw, and one eye-catching sequence thrusts a maligned character above the clouds before they get their comeuppance. From start to finish, the film is a showcase for the special effects that bring the titular tempest to life, with everything else filler and dressing.

Indeed, spectacle remains the purpose of Into the Storm; however more than CGI sights are needed to entertain and engage beyond the obvious. Such concerns seem to trouble Quale little, as he willingly disposes of anything extraneous in the name of leaving jaws agape. Even the found footage conceit is discarded when better shots can be found, heightening an offering characterised – in story and execution – by derivation and disarray. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this!’ exclaims one character at the film’s climax, but audiences cannot make such a statement.