Into the Storm Review: Dull Disaster Porn

Into the Storm is the disaster porn version of Twister with a found footage format.

The film’s combination of practical and CGI effects does make the tornado disaster look believable. Thanks to more than a decade of improved CGI, there’s plenty of large-scale tornadoes causing big-scale devastation of a small town’s buildings and infrastructure.

Into the Storm offers nothing beyond this. The film makes an effort to properly set-up its found-footage format by showing whose carrying which camera but fails to develop everything else.

The movie starts with good intentions by focusing on the people of the small town.

Donnie records video messages of seniors at his school, asking about what they think of the future. Through this project, we get to know his single dad and brother Trey. We also get to know Kaitlyn, a girl he’s been pining for but never made a move until an opportunity strikes on graduation day. Somewhere else in town are other characters who willingly get caught in the fray – a pair of thrill-seeking amateur rednecks and a team of tornado chasers.

The cast tries to make it work, but they have underwritten characters with predictable subplots – contrived family drama, stereotypical young love, and cliched toxic ambition. The movie throws in a couple of rednecks for comic relief – the token black guy and the sacrificial lamb.

These characters are always within a good distance of tornadoes that have a mind of its own (and later on gets power-up). And yet, they don’t have pitiable consequences.

The movie gets a happy ending and Donnie gets the girl.

Into The Storm is a visual effects reel of mindless destruction that happens to have characters in it. It tries to be a survival movie but forgets that you need to have survivors worth investing in and a story that’s worth following.