2024 has been a great reminder that blockbuster movies don’t have to be about superheroes. Twisters earned an incredible amount of money, reminding us of the power of the old-fashioned disaster movie. A decade ago, we had another movie with a very similar mission that was met with a far less warm reception. Into the Storm tells the story of a group of high school students and storm chasers who find themselves dealing with a once-in-a-generation spat of tornadoes. As they try to document the storms and survive them, we see just how devastating their effects can be, and just how dangerous the natural world can be at its worst.
Here are three reasons you should make time for Into the Storm 10 years later, and two reasons you might not remember it all that fondly.
Pro: It’s trashy fun. Look, trying to argue that Into the Storm is some kind of masterpiece doesn’t feel credible, and that’s because it isn’t. What’s also true, though, is that not every movie needs to feel like it was directed by Martin Scorsese. Into the Storm is schlocky, and it plays into plenty of fairly predictable tropes, but that’s a huge part of what makes the movie appealing. It’s not going to change your life, but you also don’t need to have studied film since you were 5 to have a good time with it. It’s a little bit trashy, a little bit basic, but that also means that it has solid pacing, and doesn’t expect too much of its audience.
Con: The special effects aren’t that great. One thing you might notice if you rewatch the original Twister is that while it remains a pretty fun, silly movie about two people who fall back in love with one another, it doesn’t exactly look incredible. When you’re watching it, though, you can chalk up the bad CGI to the era when the movie was made. Unfortunately, Into the Storm doesn’t have the same excuse. It’s a movie built around the notion that these storms are both powerful and terrifying, but the actual effects that make up the backbone of the movie don’t really give you that impression. Instead, all of the effects work feels a bit generic, and that’s not just because of the budget level. There’s an artful way to make a mid-budget effects-driven movie, but Into the Storm doesn’t get there.
Pro: It doesn’t overstay its welcome. Twisters is a lot of fun, but the movie is relatively long for a movie of its kind. Into the Storm, thankfully, is a lot brisker, which is fitting for its status as a less-prestigious project. The movie is just 89 minutes long, which gives it the chance to focus in on precisely what it should be delivering to its audience, which is plenty of thrilling set pieces in which tornadoes destroy both people and property. This kind of destruction can be exhausting if you get too much of it, but Into the Storm knows exactly when and where to deliver its climax, and it also understands that we don’t need to spend much time with these characters when they aren’t chasing a storm or dealing with its deadly aftermath.
Con: The characters are completely disposable. One of the realities of a movie like Into the Storm is that you’re much more likely to remember the storms than you are to remember any of the movie’s individual characters. The cast is filled with fine actors, although there are no real A-listers in the bunch, and the overwhelming impression you get is that the movie doesn’t care very much about any of their individual stories or arcs. These are just the human vessels for the set pieces that make up the movie’s core. The great movies of this genre, like Twister and its sequel, have characters that you love, even if you don’t know all that much about them.
Pro: The characters don’t get in the way of what you’re really there for. The characters are thin, and none of the actors are big enough stars to compensate for the fact that they’re underwritten. While that may leave the final product feeling a little bit disposable, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie is rendered totally inert as a result. Into the Storm is the kind of movie you go to at least in part for its spectacle, and characters can sometimes get in the way of that. That’s especially true when you already know that you don’t have anything new or revolutionary to say with your characters. Sometimes, a trauma-laden backstory that takes up all the oxygen actually makes the end product worse. Into the Storm can be rented or purchased at Amazon Prime Video.
