Film Review: ‘Into The Storm’

For all you thrill seekers out there: nature has never struck ice cold fear into your hearts quite like this before.

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This is the rare big scale disaster film that manages to have amazing graphics on a grand, apocalyptic scale, but also makes what is happening to the characters feel personal and urgent. Into the Storm is filmed in the trendy “found footage” fashion, following two main storylines. The first is of a documentary crew that chases storms, with Pete (Matt Walsh) heading the team relentlessly as he is running out of time and money for these adventures. Another noteworthy member of the team is Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies), who is the meteorologist of the group, responsible for finding out where the storms are going to be. We find out that she’s also a single mother, with a kid at grandma’s, and that makes the storm she’s about to head into that much more ominous. The other storyline we follow is that of a high school vice principal (Richard Armitage) and his two sons, who happen to be interviewing people around them for a time capsule, a convenient and interesting way to document what happens in the film and staying with the genre.

The film opens with a truly terrifying scene of teenagers in a car, unaware of the impending doom that is about happen. One of the kids is filming them with his iPhone, and they see a large storm happening outside. Suddenly all the streetlights begin exploding, one by one. Because this is a horror movie, the kid filming gets out of the car to “get a closer look” even though the others (and our hearts) are screaming at him to just stay inside the car. Though it’s a storm movie and not a monster movie, per-say, there’s still the uneasy feeling that something here is out to get you. I think that’s what makes this film different than typical disaster films, where the destruction is at large, and targeted towards Earth in general. In this film, the storm feels irrationally alive and sinister–like the chase of a more typical horror movie such as “The Grudge,” where there is an actual creature–and perhaps that’s what makes it so terrifying, and so personal, because this storm isn’t supposed to have a brain…but you know somehow, that it’s coming for you.But it couldn’t have all happened without the amazingly real graphics conjured up for this film. With the “found footage” style it has, the movie has to be filmed with everything from an iPhone to a professional multi-thousand dollar camera. And it manages to make the storm look consistently real and visceral every time.

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The bottom line is, Into the Storm is a refreshing take on storm and thriller movies alike, with a talented director who knows exactly how to strike genuine fear into our hearts.

“Into The Storm” hits theaters this Friday, August 8.