Into the Storm Review

RYAN: I’m thrilled to welcome my dear friend Tina Nelson to the site for this review.  She’s form Kansas which appropriately lends tornado street cred for this movie.  And I love that throughout her life, whenever anyone finds out she’s from there, they invariably make a Wizard of Oz or Dorothy comment, which would be amazing for me; but is probably only cute for five minutes to the typical Kansas gal.

TINA: That’s 100% accurate.  It always seems to be the tendency when people hear I’m from that great Kansas prairie.  I get the Wizard of Oz references in addition to, “Have you ever seen a tornado?” And the thing is, I have!

RYAN: I love it! I love that you can add that extra layer to this review.  I was very excited for this film.  The trailer is fantastic.  I liked the movie Twister and I love tornados on screen because of Oz.  I had high expectations and I liked the first five minutes of the movie which was more like a horror film, before the title credit.  And then I was frustrated during the rest of the film for how horrible it is.

TINA: I completely agree.  It’s basically just the weather version of a slasher film.  And slasher movies aren’t known for their brilliant cinematic high points.

RYAN: Exactly.  It’s not gory but the violence and suspense in the tornado scenes and the actions of the characters are rather cliche unto slasher films.

TINA:  Yeah things are thrown around.  It’s violent and so unrealistic.

RYAN: All of the best things are in the trailer.  I spent much of the movie waiting for cool tornados and aside from a few, you’re just really waiting for them.

TINA: It’s really not until the end that you get to see a cool tornado and there’s just not much of a story to tie it all together.

RYAN: The script is horrible.  There are several missed opportunities and missed ends.  Character relationships and subplots are set up that never go anywhere and never resolve. It’s highly disappointing.  There’s nothing substantial there.  It’s like a different person wrote the first half of the film from the second half.  And it’s poorly cast.  Aside from a couple people, most of the actors were not even physically suited to their roles.  They were just the wrong type altogether – the dad, the head storm chaser… so bad.  I never bought them in their roles.  They’re not good actors.

TINA: You can’t ever really care about any of them because their relationships didn’t connect well to each other.  There’s no chemistry.

RYAN: The dad was the worst.  He’s a very attractive man but he didn’t seem at all like the father to those two boys.  And he did this mold deep Batman voice or something that was so awkward and such a turn off.  It was such obvious acting.

TINA: They all over played.  The drama between them all just dissipated in the tragedy, which is understandable, but it’s all so quick and unrealistic.

RYAN: It’s a found footage film, but while you can see some of the cameras, there were often shots that came out of nowhere; not established by any camera or character and I found that lazy and distracting.

TINA: It was messy.

RYAN: And the characters did things out of character for what was established.  Like the one guy who was the most afraid of being a storm chaser suddenly does something so contrary to that and it was so dumb and then obvious.

TINA: At one point I thought sharks would fly out of the tornados.

RYAN: (laughs) It is Sharknado bad.  We did agree there was one tornado that was cool and different.

TINA: We haven’t talked about the YouTube storm chasers.

RYAN: OMG they were such lame characters.  I get that they were going for the whole Jackass scenario but that was another missed opportunity.  A funny introduction of the characters and then they just become obsolete and again, lame.  They brought the movie down even lower from an already low bar.

TINA: I know people are gonna ask me if I’ve seen it and if tornados are really like this.  No.

RYAN: When you’re running for your life in the face of a tornado, you’re not thinking, “Wait let me get this footage.”  You’re throwing the camera and running for your life.

TINA: If there are cars hurling through the air toward you and you’re standing there and your hair’s not even moving, um…. probably not realistic.  The best part of the movie was the popcorn.

RYAN: That says it all.

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