Into the Storm

A crew of storm chasers cruising Tornado Alley and a small-town school administrator and his teenage sons preparing for their high-school's graduation all get more than they bargained for when a platoon of tornadoes converge, joining up to form the biggest funnel cloud in the history of computer-generated imagery. It's 1996's Twister on steroids, without even the limited wit or second-rank stars of that schlock classic. Here the actors are all earnest no-names with vaguely familiar faces, while the script, by one John Swetnam, resorts to that already mossy cliché, the “found video” pseudo-documentary. The money director Steven Quale saved by hiring hungry unknowns and not insisting on rewrites all went into the CGI, and the storm scenes deliver everything promised by the preview trailer, and more.