Into The Storm Review

I watched the new movie "Into the Storm" last night. It is described as: "Storm trackers, thrill-seekers, and everyday townspeople document an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes touching down in the town of Silverton." 


It stars Richard Armitage (Thorin Oakenshield) and Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori from Walking Dead). 

I will admit that the beginning of this movie is almost hard to watch. It has rednecks jumping a 4-wheeler into a flaming pool, awkward self interviews and more awkward acting by the two main teenager boys, and then a pain in the ass boss/employee relationship is established. 
But once the movie is going, and the first 10 minutes or so are out of the way it starts getting good. What I really mean is once it starts storming it gets good. The back-story and characters are set up, and then a massive super-cell is heading toward the town of Silverton, the storm system keeps growing beyond what everyone thought it could be. Armitage plays the character Gary who is the Vice Principal of the school, it is graduation day and he would like to move the ceremony inside since it's going to storm. The Principal says no. Which is dumb. I will get to why it's dumb later. The ceremony begins and it starts raining heavily, everyone whips out and umbrella, another dumb thing, and they decide to speed up the process and say "You graduated! Now get inside the school/shelter." Once inside Gary's youngest son, who is filming the graduation and has a camera permanently attached to his hand the entire, decides to stand by the big glass doors and film the tornado that has just touched down and is coming at him. It flings a tree at him, he panics and hauls ass into the school whilst his father is yelling at him. Meanwhile Gary's oldest son who was suppose to help film the graduation is with a girl at an abandoned paper mill trying to help her film her documentary/essay. The tornado that hit the school hits the paper mill and they get stuck obviously. 

Meanwhile the "Titus" team, which looks eerily similar to the TIV, is trying to catch a break and actually intercept a tornado. The driver of Titus is Pete, he is a film-maker, like Sean Casey, and is trying to get the perfect shot of inside a tornado. His temper flairs when Callies character Allison tells him to go to Silverton instead of Ridgecrest, and they see on the tv that Ridgecrest just got hit by a tornado. Little does he know Allison was 1000% right in telling him to go to Silverton. 

I'm not going to go into super spoiler mode, so I'll just say this: At one point 5 tornadoes touch down and one becomes a fire-nado. Which is a real thing I saw it at the science museum. Some people die, lots of the people live which is a good. The tornado at the end was some of the best graphics I've seen in a while. Making a EF5 tornado look genuinely real isn't easy peasy, but they did it.

The CGI was incrediable, it blows the fake tornadoes of Twister out of the water. The characters are relatable, one of the would-be storm chasers nearly quits because he is terrified. Who wouldn't be scared if you saw a tornado take out an entire building then nearly drop a truck on you? The storm system is a bit exagerated, but you have to have that for a movie. The devistation at the end was not though. If that many tornadoes touched down the ruin would epic. Especially a EF5 twister plowing a ten mile long trail through your town.

I was a little weary at first but I really did enjoy this movie. I will most likely buy it when it comes out, which is saying something cause I don't normally do that. I would rate it 7 out of 10 stars.

I live in Oklahoma, which is where the fictional town is set. I have lived here my entire life. Which is why I said that the principal was dumb. I don't know of any Oklahoman who would willingly have a graduation outside when there is a Tornado Watch/Warning in effect. Especially after what happened in Moore. Another thing about some of the characters, I feel like I should be insulted. There are two rednecks who are trying to be YouTube film stars, they are portrayed as the epitome of dumb backwoods rednecks. Now i'm not saying that there aren't dumb rednecks out here, but if the film had of been set in Kansas or Nebraska (which are also in Tornado Alley) would there have been 4-Wheeler jumping rednecks? 
I don't think so. Also, no one, not even storm chaser would stand, out in the open STAND, as close to tornadoes as anyone did in this movie. That was odd, and the most unrealistic part of the movie. One chasers camera got sucked away by a fire-nado and he tried to go get it. That was dumb, the standing half a mile away from a massive vortex of terror that's moving faster than you can run thing, is dumb. No one does that, and if they do they are gonna die. So don't do that.


(SPOILER)
I was oddly surprised that the two main actors didn't fall in love by the end of the movie. That's the cliche thing to do and almost every movie does that. So it was nice.