Director: Stephen Quale
Starring: Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 89 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2014

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Rating notes: Mature themes

Whew!!

Actually, that sounds rather weak as a verbal effort to describe the impact of the tornadoes in this semi-documentary disaster film.

How to describe the extraordinary special effects, making the tornadoes (storm in the title is definitely an understatement) seem so real, visually, aurally? So that by the end of the film, though comfortably ensconced in our cinema seats, we do feel the aftermath of being battered and bruised by being immersed in these twisters. (“Awesome”, had it not been hijacked by modern usage, over-usage, could have been a word to describe the impact of the effects – a friend kindly came to the rescue and suggested “astounding” which will do!)

The plot is fairly standard, the attention of the film-makers going to the action sequences rather than to their particularly ordinary dialogue. And the characters, also, are rather ordinary. There are three groups who eventually come together.

The main group is the storm-chasers, professionals, who roam around in high-technical vehicles, one really like a tank, another with sophisticated storm-chasing computers with links to television stations to bring immediate tornado footage. They are led by a very demanding professional named Pete, harsh towards everyone, challenged that he is thinking only of money and reputation rather than the concerns of injured people, but, of course, showing himself heroic at the end. There are drivers as well as camera operators, and Alison, the university educated expert on storms.

The second group focuses on a family, widower father, rather severe on his two teenage sons, who go to a graduation at the local school only to find that the graduate son is absent, making a video with his girlfriend.

The third group, negligible (and the film could’ve done without them), are some Youtube Yobs, not a brain between them, drinking then drunk, carrying on with attitudes and behaviour and stunts like the Jackass team.

But, the screenplay posits more tornadoes on the one day than Oklahoma ever saw. And then they start to split. As has been said, the visual impact of the tornadoes, the pace of the editing for maximum shock and involvement, more than justifies the making of the film. If you want to see instant destruction, from the continually moving tornadoes, the film certainly provides it. (In the old days, Dorothy’s house rolling through the air and landing in olives’s’sOz, seemed spectacular. This time, roofs and vehicles are easy targets – by the end, there are several 747 is whirling through the air.)

By the end, there is a group in peril, the father and his son, the rescued son (in the nick of time) and his girlfriend, Pete and his team, hiding in a stormwater channel, experiencing the twisters, the calm of the eye of the storm, and the final battering.

In one sense, the film is a very average B-budget story. But, it is an above average experience of cinema tornadoes.