STEVEN Quayle’s second feature (in 2011, I gave half a star to his first, “Final Destination”) “Into the Storm” cost $US50million and Americans have already paid twice that to see it.
Others have described it a “found-footage disaster film”. Every frame of it has been carefully staged. However, “disaster” hits the mark well enough.
High-school deputy principal Gary (Richard Armitage) takes his younger son to school while the older one goes off to shoot footage for a class assignment. Down the track, tornado hunters driving a van packed with weather-sensing and comms gear and a supposedly tornado-proof custom-built vehicle carrying a camera team, are desperate to get up close and personal with a tornado so that they can sell the footage for big bucks.
Today’s their day. But the footage will cost big bucks. Every buck they have, in fact.
Directing the school population and the tornado hunters through not one, nor two but four tornadoes that obligingly enter town along main roads before veering into buildings that Quayle wants them to demolish, John Swetnam’s screenplay runs on trite cliché dialogue and exaggerated situations. The CG disaster footage looks great (one star for that). The plot might have made better sense had it tried harder to respect viewers’ intelligence by offering even slim consistency and credibility.
At Capitol 6, Palace Electric, Dendy, Hoyts and Limelight
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