Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Into the Storm (2014) movie review

I could tell just by the trailers that this wasn’t going to be all that good. I somehow got around to watching it recently, and I found out I was wrong with my original assumptions- it was far worse than I expected.





As far as disaster movies go, the only ones that I’ve seen that I’ve liked are Day After Tomorrow and San Andreas. Into the Storm, which I just saw recently, is the absolute worst. It’s boring, it’s stupid, and it’s a waste of time and money. I don’t know why it was greenlit, because nobody in their right mind would ever find enjoyment out of this.

First of all, Into the Storm is a found footage movie about tornadoes destroying a town…. and that’s about it. But it’s only partially a found footage movie. I really don’t think the filmmakers knew whether they wanted it to be found footage or regular format, because there are scenes where there aren’t any characters behind the camera that are holding it. Also, there’s background music. Typically, found footage movies don’t have background music. To make it worse, the music isn’t the least bit impressive or memorable. So, i guess this can be classified as a partial found footage movie… and when a movie doesn’t know what it wants to be, it’s usually the first sign that there’s something wrong. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot wrong with this.

The characters are the main problem with Into the Storm. They’re cliche’d, they’re boring, not the least bit entertaining, and they’re stupid! I’ve seen some pretty stupid movies with some pretty stupid characters, and this one has some pretty dumb-ass characters. I didn’t care for any of them. The movie barely tries to make you care for them. And only one person of the main cast dies, and he goes out in one of the most idiotic ways possible: he stands directly in front of a flaming tornado with his little camera, trying to “get the best shot” for a stupid TV show he does, and gets sucked in and burned alive. Also, the fire tornado thing, while impossible, looks kinda cool. If only it was used in a different movie, though.

The other major problem is how cliche and predictable everything is. You know exactly what every character is going to be like, you know exactly what’s going to happen, and when. There are predictable movies that can still be fun and enjoyable, but that’s because they try to make it fun. If Into the Storm was handled by other filmmakers that actually cared to put effort into making a functional disaster movie, I do think it could have been at least entertaining. The people who did unfortunately work on it didn’t even try.

But the effects and destruction scenes are cool, right?

No. They’re not. The effects are right below average, and the destruction isn’t impressive. We’ve seen these effects and this destruction before, but the presentation is the key to making a movie like this work. Unfortunately, the destruction isn’t presented well in the slightest. This leads into what I think is the stupidest part of the entire movie: the tornadoes don’t hit any place where tornadoes aren’t expected. LA, New York, and other major cities never get tornadoes. It would be unexpected to see one of those places get tornadoes, wouldn’t it? It would also be fun to have in a movie, right? Well, don’t watch Into the Storm if you want to see something cool or creative. The tornadoes only hit some suburban town of Oklahoma- you know, a state where tornadoes are pretty freaking common? The state where the highest number of tornadoes it’s had in recorded history was a total of 145 in the year 1999? I have the link to prove it:


In conclusion, Into the Storm is a failure in both a creative and in a filmmaking sense. Don’t waste your time. Don’t even watch it while drunk. Go watch something else.

FINAL RATING: 6 / 50
STORY: 0 / 5
ACTING: 1 / 5
CHARACTERS: 0 / 5
SPECIAL EFFECTS: 2 / 5
ACTION/DESTRUCTION: 2 / 5
SOUNDTRACK: 1 / 5
TONE: 0 / 5
ENJOYABILITY: 0 / 5
REWATCH VALUE: 0 / 5
OWNING VALUE: 0 / 5

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