It's graduation day at a high school in the town of Silverton and students have been given the assignment of documenting their lives for use in a time capsule. The day is going ahead but with a little concern for bad weather in the area. Meanwhile, a documentary film crew are desperately looking for some good hurricane footage which brings them to Silverton just before a massive series of tornados strike the town.
Tornados are in right now however, much of this has to do with Syfy's cult success with the Sharknado films which, to be fair, nobody's taking very seriously. I mean, look at the title. In general, Into The Storm seems to be more straight-laced and serious than its shark-spewing associate in genre and throwing in elements of the recent obsession the horror genre currently has with "found footage" films.
On looking at the trailers and the premise for the movie, there's also a string vibe of Roland Emmerich about the whole thing. A big and bloated disaster movie that dispenses with subtlety and a lot of logic in favour of just indulging in the crashing spectacle of it all. Well...this is sort of the case. It's still an effects driven film that places far more emphasis on things being thrown through the air and less on scientific plausibility but lacks some of Emmerich's gleefully dim-witted sense of showmanship.
In reality whilst there's nothing particularly bad about the plots involving the suburban family or the documentary crew that are the main points of focus for the plot, the film is at its most entertaining when seen from the perspective of a couple of drunken rednecks looking to become Youtube celebs (and yes, the product placement is laid on so thick it could almost be peeled off the screen).
Personally, I'm getting tired of found footage becoming a go-to convention for horror movies. I understand its popularity at the moment (there are usually lower production costs that come with the low-tech idea and can easily be used to obscure otherwise expensive effects sequences. Simply put, they're cheap to make) and its never certain what the purpose is. The film does seem glossier and more expensive than most found footage films and the film darts between using found footage and the traditional fourth wall approach to the point of confusion. I've seen worse films with the found footage trick, but its superfluous nature in this film comes as an annoyance.
In some ways, Into The Storm represents a pretty dark future for disaster movies. A slide not only further to its cousin, the horror genre, but towards some of the corniest and hackneyed parts of that genre. Surely, if Into The Storm is a hit, there'll be a sequel (Within The Storm? Beyond The Storm?) which will probably do to its own prospective series what the winds in this did to the town of Silverton. The filmmakers came away with something somewhat pleasingly noisy and watchable but lets hope they don't repeat themselves.
Into The Storm has already opened in the US, with a UK release scheduled for August the 22nd.
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