CINEWATCHED

Into the Storm Review: Is This Found-Footage Film Worth the Whirlwind?

By Cinewatched
Into the Storm Review: Is This Found-Footage Film Worth the Whirlwind?

Into the Storm delivers on the spectacle, offering visually stunning destruction and non-stop, gripping action from start to finish. A catastrophic superstorm unleashes a relentless barrage of colossal, EF-5 tornadoes on a small, unsuspecting American town. but beneath the impressive CGI and thrilling chaos, is there enough plot and character to make you truly care who survives?

  • Title: Into the Storm
  • Director: Steven Quale (the guy who brought us Final Destination 5, so he knows a thing or two about creatively offing people)
  • Key Cast: Richard Armitage (looking gruff), Sarah Wayne Callies (being smart), Matt Walsh (being... intense)
  • Genre: Found-Footage Disaster Flick
  • Runtime: A breezy 89 minutes
  • Release Date: August 2014
  • Rating: PG-13 (for language, intense peril, and the general terror of Mother Nature)
Into the Storm Review: Is This Found-Footage Film Worth the Whirlwind?

The Lowdown

So the whole shebang goes down in the fictional town of Silverton, Oklahoma. It's graduation day, which in any movie is basically a neon sign screaming "DISASTER APPROACHING!" We mostly follow two groups of people. On one side, you've got Gary, a high school vice-principal and a widower trying to connect with his two sons. His older kid, Donnie, decides this exact day is the perfect time to skip his filming duties and help his crush, Kaitlyn, with a video project at a super-secure, definitely-not-condemned paper mill. Smart.

On the other side, a crew of storm chasers is rolling into town. Led by the wildly obsessed Pete, they're desperate to capture insane tornado footage inside a tank-like vehicle named Titus. Their meteorologist, Allison, is the voice of reason, but she's also under pressure to deliver the storm of the century. And then... the skies open up. What starts as a bit of bad weather quickly escalates into an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes. The rest of the movie is a pure, unadulterated sprint for survival as these groups collide and try not to get sucked into the sky.

Into the Storm Review: Is This Found-Footage Film Worth the Whirlwind? Into the Storm Review: Is This Found-Footage Film Worth the Whirlwind?

My Take

The Vibe

Hang on a second, let me be completely transparent. This film is the cinematic equivalent of a bag of cheap, ridiculously delicious cheese puffs. It's not good for you, you feel a little guilty while consuming it, but you absolutely cannot stop until the bag is empty. It's a B-movie with a blockbuster budget, and it knows exactly what it is. Don't walk in expecting Shakespeare. Walk in expecting to see a fire tornado. Seriously. A freaking firenado.

Into the Storm Review: Is This Found-Footage Film Worth the Whirlwind?

Shout-Outs

Let's get this out of the way first: the visual effects team deserved a raise and a lifetime supply of caffeine. The tornadoes themselves are legitimately breathtaking. We're not talking Sharknado-level silliness here; these swirling monsters look terrifyingly real and the destruction they unleash is epic in scale. One minute a neighborhood is there, the next it's a cloud of splinters. The scene where a tornado gobbles up a gas station and becomes a swirling vortex of fire is a masterclass in CGI destruction. It's stupid, but it's beautifully rendered stupidity.

Test

Also, the movie is smart enough to keep it short. At 89 minutes, it's a sprint, not a marathon. It doesn't overstay its welcome. Just when you think you can't watch another character make another dumb decision, the credits roll. I respect that kind of pacing.

Wanna hear something crazy? I have a weird soft spot for Matt Walsh's character, Pete. Dude is so single-mindedly obsessed with getting his footage that he morphs into this magnificently ambiguous creature. Is he a visionary? A monster? A total d-bag? The performance is so committed you can't look away. He's the human embodiment of the movie's entire ethos: go big or go home.

Into the Storm Review: Is This Found-Footage Film Worth the Whirlwind?

The Niggles

Seriously, though. The characters. Oh, the characters. Trying to remember any of their names or motivations after the movie ends is like trying to grab smoke. Richard Armitage's Gary is so emotionally constipated he might as well be a tree, and the teen drama between his son and the girl is so bland it makes wonderbread look spicy. You will not care if they live or die. You will, however, care about the tornadoes. The tornadoes have more personality.

And the "found footage" gimmick... my dude, it is so tired. The film contorts itself into a pretzel trying to justify why someone is still filming. "Hold on, a tornado is vaporizing my house, let me get a good shot of this for my vlog!" It feels less like a creative choice and more like a contractual obligation for a trend that was already on its last legs in 2014.

Don't even get me started on the two yahoo daredevils, Donk and Reevis, who provide the "comic relief." Their quest for YouTube fame by taunting tornadoes is so profoundly idiotic it made me want to crawl into the screen and shake them. Every second they're on screen is a second I'm not watching things go boom.

Verdict

So, what's the final word on this chaotic mess?

My Rating: 6/10 - A Glorious Guilty Pleasure

Look, Into the Storm is not a "good" movie by any sane critical metric. The script is clunky, the characters are cardboard cutouts, and the dialogue will make you cringe more than your middle school diary. But man, does it deliver on its core promise. You wanna see a giant tornado tear an airport to shreds, sucking up jumbo jets like they're tic tacs? You got it. You wanna feel your heart pound during a few genuinely well-executed, gasp-worthy moments of destruction? It's all right here.

Who this is for: You're home with a pizza on a rainy Friday night. Your brain is fried. You want to turn off all higher cognitive functions and watch the world get spectacularly demolished for 90 minutes. You're a sucker for disaster porn and impressive VFX.

Who this is NOT for: You crave complex characters, intelligent plotting, and meaningful dialogue. You think found-footage is a dead genre. You get genuinely stressed out by scenes of natural disasters.

Final advice? Don't overthink it. Grab the biggest tub of popcorn you can find, check your brain at the door, and just let the wind take you. It's a blast. A dumb, ridiculous, and absolutely thrilling blast. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch a video of a real tornado. The craving hasn't subsided.

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