REVIEW OF INTO THE STORM

year: 2014 rating: **1/2

If TWISTER and FINAL DESTINATION had a baby with a video camera, its named would be INTO THE STORM...

The device popularized in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and legitimized in the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY flicks and more recently, CHRONICLE and EARTH TO ECHO, is all the rage, and can drive you up a wall. But STORM has enough characters within the small town, ravaged by a number of menacing tornadoes, so the documentary technique isn’t all shaky: Each group of characters has their own method of recording their lives within the roving catastrophe…

The best (least annoying) group is a military unit that is much like Bill Pullman’s band of scientific hippies from TWISTER, only much less quirky... With an armoured vehicle that can plant itself into the earth without moving, their technological vantage is the most steady. Along the ride is a lady who becomes a possible love interest to a high school principle with two sons.The eldest son, in love with a beautiful high school environmentalist, provides the worst tale as the couple are stuck underwater, trapped within a building and spouting their last words. This takes us away from the action of the storm chasers, who deserve our complete attention. Then there’s comic relief in the form of two daredevil white trash idiots (wannabe JACKASS types), dying to go viral on YouTube.

The special effects are all right. Nowadays anything can look real with computers. Although there are times when the twisters look straight out of SHARKNADO sans the killer fish. But what makes INTO THE STORM a fairly entertaining disaster film is that it’s really a campy character-driven adventure that, especially during an 11th hour climax with the survivors hunkered-down in a sewer, is a decent way to spend 90 minutes with people that aren’t completely likable, but at least their cameras don’t get in the way of their stories.