Into The Storm – Movie Review
Into The Storm – PG-13
Release Date: Fri 08 Aug 2014
Into The Storm manages a neat trick of being a better movie than the premise would lead you to believe. It’s a movie about a super-storm that produces freakishly numerous and powerful tornadoes. Yet the movie doesn’t go overboard on carnage or destruction. It keeps things small and localized which helps it feel strangely believable. It asks for just enough suspension of disbelief that it feels like it earns every moment that pushes over into science fiction.
The story is well constructed with believable characters. It takes a little bit of time with each one setting up their characters and grounding them in the movie’s world. In most disaster movies, we would be dealing with a couple of cliche or stereotypical characters. Here, the story seems to be an episode that has events before and after the movie start. This is particularly crazy day for these characters but we don’t see it bringing love interests together or some kind of justice done. There aren’t any huge names in the cast, but the performances are strong and evenly matched so that the more known actors (Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies and Matt Walsh) don’t end up stealing the show.
Special effects are very well done and are easily the most expensive aspect of the production. I expected The Asylum style quick and dirty special effects, but these were high quality and interesting to watch. As a lifelong Midwesterner I’ve seen my share of thunderstorms and a handful of tornadoes. While the film strays from what really happens it never pushes far beyond what seems possible. Again, it doesn’t ask you to suspend disbelief to the breaking point.
The body count and overall human toll is very low, which makes the couple of deaths or injuries you do see stand out. This works to the movie’s advantage because it makes it feel more real and like a local storm in a small Midwestern town rather than a huge, nation-impacting disaster movie. It’s better than many similar genre movies with the thrills keeping you on the edge of your seat and just enough science fiction to sell the potential for all of this to happen.
Hannah, Aaron and I saw it in the theater had a discussion in the car:
