INTO THE STORM

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: F
Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Max Deacon, Jeremy Sumpter, Alycia Debnam Carey, Nathan Kress
Written by John Swetnam
Directed by Stephen Quale
Rated PG-13

1996's Michael Crichton blockbuster Twister is a dumb movie trying to convince you it is a smart one. But its one of my all time great guilty pleasures, with a strong cast including Helen Hunt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, fast pacing and some very amusing dialogue (thanks to an uncredited rewrite by Joss Whedon.). And while Twister may try to pretend it's smart, it never loses sight of the fact that it's main goal is to entertain, and it doesn't take itself too seriously. In 1999, a very different film called The Blair Witch Project made a big impact by creating the "found footage" genre. This movie was a polar opposite to Twister: made on almost no budget, with no effects or stars, what made The Blair Witch Project work is that it took itself deadly seriously in terms of tone, so much so that early audiences thought they were seeing a real documentary. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Blair Witch. I saw it far too late, after all the hype, and I was really underwhelmed. But I do have a respect for what the filmmakers achieved given their resources, and the fact that they created an artificial reality and narrative device and stuck firmly to it, never wavering and really selling us on the narrative device.

Into The Storm (which is not to be confused with the acclaimed HBO movie starring Brendan Gleeson as Winston Churchill) seems to be the result of someone's drunken idea that it would be a good idea to combine Twister and The Blair Witch Project, in the most literal possible sense. This movie tries to combine the found footage genre with the blockbuster disaster movie as sloppily as possible. It wants to put us into the action in the style of both films, never mind that the two styles couldn't clash more. Cloverfield did found footage while using a Hollywood budget and spectacular effects, but Into The Storm goes so far as to have a full orchestral score! We are left with the inescapable conclusion that writer John Sweetnam, who wrote and sold a spec script, and Director Stephen Quale (in his first turn at bat after serving as an Assistant Director on films such as Titanic and Avatar) wanted to make entirely different films, and neither one of them was experienced enough at telling a story to have a clue what they were doing.

The "plot," as it were, centers around the town of Silverton, Oklahoma. Teenage brothers Donnie and Trey (Max Deacon and Nathan Kress, respectively) are video junkies who are shooting everything because they are making a "video time capsule," which consists mostly of people recording messages to themselves 25 years in the future, and telling their future selves about what life was like for them back now (because it would be impossible for anyone to know their own thoughts if they did not express them aloud to themselves on camera.). Donnie and Trey live with father, Gary (Richard Armitage, best known as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit.). Gary is the Vice Principal of the local High School, and his relationship with his sons has been strained since the death of his wife. Meanwhile, a group of stormchasers and documentary filmmakers head to Silverton in search of tornadoes. They are lead by Pete (Matt Walsh), a man obsessed with making the ultimate documentary about tornadoes and actually getting footage from the eye of the storm, and Allison (Sarah Wayne Collins), a young meteorologist who wants to make a difference but does not want to put anyone in harm's way. And, just to make sure we fully cover our bases and make sure there are enough people shooting video to make the movie work, we have the two local jackasses (Kyle Dais and Jon Reep) who shoot stupid human tricks for their YoutTube channel. These two are meant to be the film's comic relief, which is ironic because they were just about the only thing at the press screening that never got a single laugh.

Silverton is, of course, ravaged by a record number of tornadoes in one day, and all of the cookie cutter characters are spread throughout the town, with the goals of A. getting everything on video, and B. surviving if possible. Eventually, they all come together and their plots intertwine and the storm forces them to band together and yadda yadda yadda if this sounds boring in print, imagine having to watch it.

I went into this movie expecting it to be a 3D effects film, but as it turns out it's not in 3D, which, combined with hearing that there was a found footage element, lead me to expect a lot of  nausea inducing shaky cam shots. The good news is that those are minimal. The bad news is, it makes no sense that they are. Whenever we see shots from the point of view of Trey's rinky dink little hand held camera that looks like it was made in the '90's, the image is not only pristine, but it is clearly on a steadicam to keep the movement smooth and slick. And despite the fact that not a one of these people has anything beyond a built in camera mic, the sound recording is perfect, filtering out only the dialogue we need to hear and never getting drowned out by background noise, even when there is a tornado (and most of the time, of course, there is one.). To say that the "found footage element" strains credibility is a gigantic understatement: there are shots in this movie that you couldn't get in a documentary if you strapped a Go Pro to God's forehead, and we are forced to assume that there is an an additional crew film everyone else film each other. (I cannot wait for the behind the scenes feature on the Blu Ray where we get to watch video coverage of people shooting people pretending to shoot video of other people pretending to shoot video while the whole thing is caught on video.).

The nicest thing that can be said about the performances is that they are so bland that at a number of times I actually wanted someone to sprinkle some salt, or even Cayenne Pepper, on Richard Armitage. Armitage's bad American accent and aloof manner made this the second bad movie this year to make me sit through the whole thing wishing that Gerard Butler was starring in it (the other one being 300: Rise Of An Empire), and if you read my ten worst list last year, you know what a big deal that is. In fairness to Armitage, who has been so memorable (if rather stoic) as the leader of the company of dwarves, is woefully miscast in this role, but he gives one of the dullest performances ever captured on film/digital video/more digital video/and even more digital video/High School security cameras (why we bother cutting away to these for two shots is a complete mystery.).  Walsh is at least memorably silly as the one track minded Pete, who will stop at nothing to get the shot he wants, but as a whole the cast is at best forgettable, and the father/son trio of Armitage, Deacon and Kress manage to go throughout the film without any defining personality traits.

And then there's the science: whether it is scientist Allison explaining to Gary that "if these patterns continue the tornadoes could start spreading."

"Spreading? To where?"

"Places tornadoes have never been. California, Ohio . . . " (Disneyland? The Moon, etc.)

 or  camera operator moving in to get a closer shot of (I am not making this up) a tornado that has caught on fire, or the moment when Pete, in his tornado proof tank, actually is sucked up into an F5 and until he flies to the top and for a moment rises ABOVE THE TORNADO and sees the majesty of the heavens (the entire audience erupted into howls of laughter at this moment), it all makes Twister look like solid scientific fact.

Into The Storm is so bad and provoked so much hostility from the viewing press at this screening that when my brother and co-host Paul Gibbs was asked to give feebdback to a studio rep and he replied with "I thought it was a cancerous polyp on the anus of cinema, and I'm only saying that because I'm trying to be kind" the fellow taking the feedback not only didn't bat an eye, he wrote this sentence down verbatim.

Into The Storm is rated PG-13 for action peril, profanity and mild vulgarity.