INTO THE STORM
Genre: Action
Director : Steven Quale
Cast: Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Alycia Debnam-Carey
An upgrade of Twister for a generation infatuated with YouTube videos, director Steven Quale’s dalliance with destruction porn oscillates between awesome and awful. Storm chasers led by Pete (Matt Walsh) and meteorologist Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) take the road to capture the emerging tornadoes on Silverton. It is the day when the city’s high school is going to celebrate graduation ceremony. As the storm gets going, Vice principal Gary Fuller (Richard Armitage) sheds his everyman image and locks horns with the wind with his teenage son Trey (Nathan Kress) even as his other son Donnie (Max Deacon) almost gets drowned because of the side effects of the storm.
No doubt, the technical skill in portraying the anatomy of a storm is spellbinding. Quale manages to create a sense of what it feels like being in the eye of the storm. The low key cast keeps the surprise factor going because you are never sure who is the next in line of nature’s wrath but after creating the spectre of death the way Quale glosses over loss of human life and destruction, perhaps to keep it in the safe terrain of summer blockbuster, it leaves a bitter taste.
It would not have made a difference in a superhero films but the fact that it is mounted as a found footage enterprise and that millions have faced tornadoes in the last couple of years makes the moral centre of the film questionable. In fact, the found footage technique strikes a false note for the background sound takes away the charade of reality. Also, the track involving Donnie and his flame is as clunky and manipulative as it gets. There are many instances which make you feel that logic is one of casualties in this mayhem inflicted by nature. When Quale introduces some redneck characters to provide comic relief, it appears as a comment on the insensitive souls amongst us but his persistence with them till the end makes it a stunt incongruous with the seriousness of the subject.
Bottomline : Nature’s fury dished out for the sake of satiating guilty pleasures
