The good people of Silverton, the small town in Oklahoma where Into the Storm is set, are, from the scanty evidence provided, well-meaning, god-fearing folks. But that doesn’t provide them immunity when Mother Nature — or God, given that director Steven Quale is given to some unsubtle Bible-thumping in his films — unleashes a freak phenomenon that visits a succession of tornadoes on them, each more vicious than the previous one. All in one day.
Quale, whose earlier directorial venture Final Destination 5 , dealt with the theme of Predestination (with its message, reinforced with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, that you can’t cheat Death or God’s Will), invokes this time a mean meteorological force of nature (which, despite the fleeting allusion to global warming, is really an Act of God, don’t you know?) to lace his narrative with an evangelical edge.
Therefore, the good people may be tested to the limit by the thunderous tornadoes, but for the most part they cling on to their lives with the redemptive power of faith, and (in one scene) even find shelter in a church: you almost expect the organ to break out into a stately rendition of Abide with Me ). And what happens to ‘bad’ people? In the opening scene, a carload of sexually charged teenagers get suggestively frisky, for which moral transgression, of course, they are immediately punished by the tornado equivalent of a Thunderbolt from Heaven. Gosh, that’s one unforgiving, party-pooping God up there!
And even the mercenary stormhunter Pete (Matt Walsh), who is dead-set on tempting Providence by filming the eye of the tornado, secures Salvation in the end when he ‘slips the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God’. But not before he atones, with an act of valour, for his earlier ‘sins’…
The problem with setting up a disaster film as a morality play is that it gets boringly predictable. It doesn’t help either that the lead characters are so vacuous, given to mouthing inane scripted lines, that they can’t channel the majestic drama that is unleashed into their lives. Disaster porn flicks like these, of course, rely excessively on special effects to see them through, and Into the Storm harnesses state-of-the-art VFX technology rather better than the 1996 film Twister did. The sight of the storm clouds contorting themselves into the classical funnel formation and making touchdown makes for gripping viewing every time. And the scene in which a foolhardy videographer gets sucked up in a flaming funnel cloud is shockingly thrilling.
But there’s too little of this action juice — and too much God — in the film to sustain secular viewer interest. Watching a Discovery documentary on tornadoes — or even just the Weather Channel — would probably be less tedious and rather more educative. (And no plastic performers to deal either.) All this movie ever does is suck up 90 minutes of your life in one giant whoosh.
