Movie Review: ‘Into The Storm’ In The Running For Worst of 2014

By Kyle Osborne

You know how sometimes you see a TV commercial for a movie and it’s described as a “Thrill Ride?”

I’ve decided to describe the new movie “Into the Storm” that way too, based on how I think of rides at theme parks:

It’s crowded. It’s hot. You are bored out of your skull, as you wait for what seems like hours for something, well, thrilling to happen.  Meanwhile, the kid in front of you has just barfed, and his Mom’s over-sized sun hat keeps popping you in the face every time she backs into you because her kid is leaning against her.

Two hours later, as you stumble through the exit (which always seems to lead to a completely desolate corner of the theme park) with motion sickness and a throbbing headache, you realize that you just traded about two hours of your life in exchange for, yes, a thrilling ninety seconds.

In that sense, “Into the Storm” is absolutely a “Thrill Ride” of a movie. Briefly.

A smallish town in Oklahoma is about to have a very bad day.  Well, it’s a bad day to schedule an outdoor graduation ceremony, but a good day to be a storm chaser. A two vehicle caravan consisting of an armored vehicle, loaded with cameras and a turret for 360 viewing, as well as a van with a Meteorologist in the back—doing her meteorological things. Two big tornadoes are coming to town.

There are human beings in this film, but we’re never really given any reason to want to watch them or worry for them. It’s all one big stall, as we await the appearance of the amazing visual effects which are state of the art. Remember the silly flying cow in 1997’s “Twister?” Things have exponentially improved in the visual effects universe since then—although there is an equally funny scene that I won’t spoil, in case you just have to see this for yourself.

People are flung to their deaths, one character is burned alive, and the destruction of an entire town—all are played out without the slightest hint of humanity.  This film’s handling of people on two legs is both corny and negligent.   Isn’t it an incontrovertible fact of storytelling that if the audience doesn’t care about the characters, then no shark, no tornado, or Sharknado, asteroid or 40 day flood will mean a damn thing?

If the very talented digital animators win awards for their work, it will be well deserved. But at this point, it looks like the only award “Into the Storm” will win is a 2014 Razzie. ‘Into The Storm’ gets 1 1/2 out of 4 Stars and is rated , inexplicably, “PG-13”