Into the Storm

One isn't long into the latest weather-related doomsday movie before a nagging question occurs: did the script for this late-summer image of elemental Armageddon at some point blow away? We all know that you don't go to these kissing cousins of Twister and the like expecting Chekhov or Mike Leigh. But Into the Storm is so peremptorily written that it's borderline hilarious.

I would imagine it's not easy to effect ceaseless variations on "we gotta get outta here" and "is everybody okay?" - to cite just two of screenwriter John Swetnam's defining lines - but rarely does one get the sense that everyone involved gave up on originality, wit, and common sense before they had even started.

More likely, the mandate from on high was to roll out the special effects and keep 'em coming, as indeed happens across 89 minutes that are visually impressive and aurally ridiculous, in turn. Shut your ears to a film that only reluctantly invokes the real world - Katrina and Sandy are both referenced briefly and then dispensed with, while the contribution of climate change and the environment to such happenings proves a thematic bridge too far - and you may thrill to the images of destruction that Steven Quale (of Final Destination 5 renown) piles one after the other, with gleeful abandon. To lend the goings-on too expert a listen is to invite a lunacy not dissimilar to the wild-eyed frenzy that soon overtakes the characters.

The location is the anticipated American Everytown - in this case, the (fictional) burg of Silverton where a motley crew have gathered to endure the wrath of a storm of such gathering severity that by the end it has more or less been described as the worst natural disaster ever to befall God's earth. Nor is God invoked lightly in a scenario where the town church seems to be more or less the only viable refuge, sending out subliminal messages that won't be lost on middle America any more than will be the paeans to the "ordinary people" who survive such wanton destruction unscathed. Or as someone at some point puts it, "our faith will see us through".

The focus by necessity devolves to an assortment of townsfolk headed by Gary, vice-principal of the local high school, who is raising two teenage sons solo following the death of his wife. That role is played with unyielding stolidity by the British actor Richard Armitage (pictured above), who on this evidence would suggest a rather low-rent Hugh Jackman if he weren't simultaneously heading up the Old Vic production of The Crucible: a potent stage gig no doubt made financially viable by this Hollywood paydate. 

While Gary frets about older son Donnie (Max Deacon), who ends up trapped underground alongside the student, Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam-Carey), on whom he has an unspoken crush, weather expert Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies of The Walking Dead) skypes her five-year-old daughter fondly referred to as "bug" in an increasingly frantic attempt to juggle meteorology with life as a single mum. (Callies is pictured above.) Throw in the grimly determined storm chaser, Pete (Veep's Matt Walsh), and a pair of goons who go by the names Donk and Reevis (I guess Butthead and Beavis were taken), and you get some sense of the assemblage thrown into the storm's path. Who makes it through depends, as ever, on where those particular actors feature in the billing. 

The inevitable truth of the matter is that the film displays about as much interest in its characters as the storm itself, the marauding fury of which makes for some eye-popping effects even if one does get a bit inured to the technicians' attempt to outdo themselves as one twister, fireball, or monsoon follows hot on the heels of the next. The audience chuckled nervously at a passing remark that other cities in this particular storm's path include LA, Chicago, and London. Batten down the hatches, people, and take solace in the fact that your scripted version of events could hardly be worse.

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Into the Storm