It’s confession time – I have a great affection for big, loud action/disaster movies that are made really well. I mean, it’s not a guilty pleasure thing – it’s a deep, abiding adoration. Speed, Jurassic Park, Cloverfield – these are all firmly among my favourite movies. Twister, for me, is the gold standard. Epic, humorous, heartfelt and unrelenting – the last best film of Jan De Bont’s directorial career has remained unsurpassed in the realm of inclement weather films for 18 years. Could the upcoming tornado flick Into The Storm be a real contender in the genre? If the new trailer is any indication, the odds are definitely in its favour.
Directed by Steven Quale (Final Destination 5), from a script by John Swetnam (Evidence), Into The Storm sees a group of high school students face the events and aftermath of an unprecedented series of devastating tornadoes that descend upon their town. Starring Richard Armitage (The Hobbit franchise, Captain America: The First Avenger), Jeremy Sumpter (Friday Night Lights), Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead), Arlen Escarpeta (Star Trek Into Darkness) and Scott Lawrence (Avatar), the film looks set to combine all the elements of a special effects-laden action film, with some characterization and actual plot.
This preview makes Into The Storm an intriguing prospect because, instead of presenting the weather as something to be in awe of, it creates a sense of a horror/monster movie, where the monster is actually heavy wind – while the casting of people whose faces are vaguely familiar, but are not instantly recognizable means that we cannot predict who will survive. We have, on the one hand, claustrophobic, intimate scenes of teenagers cowering in dark rooms – only to be effectively stalked and yanked away by an unseen force – coupled with sweeping camera pull-backs to reveal dark and sinister funnels chomping their way through the town, sweeping huge objects into the air like Tonka toys. It’s a ‘town-under-siege’ movie, but the monster is Mother Nature – and that’s a brilliant premise.
Into The Storm crashes into US cinemas on August 8th, 2014. You can watch the trailer below.
