Review: 'Into the Storm', Starring Sarah Wayne Callies and Matt Walsh

Hurricanes can get pretty strong and insane, and even though people living in hurricane regions have gotten used to them, they're still forces to be reckoned with. Oh, wait, Into the Storm isn't a hurricane movie. Although, it might have been a much better one had it focused on another kind of natural storm rather than practically ripping off Twister in a documentary-style film that is wooden, has no real stakes, and is just an excuse to make the largest tornado funnel ever, and gives the incarnation of the world-eating Galactus from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer a run for his money. 

There isn't much of a story to go on here, but whatever narrative there is will be heavily summarized to prevent spoilers, though, spoiler alert, there aren't any. Allison (Sarah Wayne

Callies), Pete (Matt Walsh) and their small team are chasing tornadoes. Allison, to study them, and Pete to make a documentary about them and rake in the cash from them. They're

in a place called Silverton when a tornado hits and they're caught right in the middle of the action, their only real weaponry being fancy cameras and a tank-like vehicle that roots itself to the ground to prevent from being taken away by the intense twister winds. 

Donnie (Max Deacon) is shooting a time capsule video at the request of his father Gary (Richard Armitage). What are your hopes and dreams for yourself 25 years from now? That is the question he poses. Though we don't really see much of that as Donnie bails on filming his high school's graduation ceremony to help out his crush Kaitlin (Alycia Debnam Carey), giving over the project to his smart-ass brother Trey (Nathan Kress). What do all the storm chasers and the Silverton family have in common? Well, for one, they're all constantly tied to their cameras. Also, they get caught in the same tornado, as one twister turns into two, and three, and four... and well, you get the point. 

The film is shot in the way of a documentary, with the character's names and their jobs appear at the bottom of the screen at the beginning of the film. I'm pretty sure the director's intent to make it a documentary within a documentary sounded fantastic in his head, only the intensity of Hollywood fiction got in the way and it turned into awful melodrama and tried to sustain a story that's as unstable as a tornado they try to run from. 

The story is wooden, the characters as bland and boring as dry toast, and the personal stakes practically non-existent. It might have even served the story better had they actually made the movie a documentary instead of something the filmmakers seem to have no vested interest or passion in and cut something together to make it look legit. Ok, ok, that's a bit harsh, but the film isn't at all near to being average. There's no depth, and for a story that's about a natural disaster that people have experienced, it's rather annoying to not even remotely try to make it something decently watchable. 

Ultimately, there are too much debris in the way to make Into the Storm an entertaining or intriguing watch. It tries, and fails miserably, at giving us something resembling a moving story about natural disasters, the people caught in them, and the destruction they leave behind, but all the drama and tension between characters, and even the storms themselves feel contrived and tacky in the larger scheme of things. Stiff, with no cohesive story or personal stakes.