The movie follows 3 groups of people. A father and his two kids who are making a video for a time capsule. A group of storm hunters who are driving around in the batmobile trying to get video from inside a tornado. And two intoxicated Rednecks who are by far the more entertaining of the three. One neat thing is each group has a camera, but it is not all done in the traditional found footage style. It will often go from them filming, to the standard film angles used in most movies. Where the crew is shooting, and you are not supposed to feel like one of the characters is. Using the two different styles and switching between them often was not confusing, but it did create a odd and annoying visual style. Also there were times when we were looking through a camera being held by one of the characters in the film. But we could see all the characters in the frame....who was the phantom camera man we never met?
Each group had their own side story that ultimately was just filler. The father and his sons didn't really get along anymore. The older son was in love with a girl who didn't really know him. The storm hunters were running out of money and needed some good footage. The rednecks were drunk and wanted to have fun. Thankfully the magic Tornado fixed most of said issues, as it was a benevolent storm. The side stories provided the majority of the "acting" and took up a good 2/3rds of the film. I didn't care for any of the groups other then the rednecks led by comedian Jon Reep. The father and his two kids felt forced, and the fact that the son gets trapped with his love interest was far to convenient. I did like Matt Walsh as the boss of the storm hunters, as he was more interested in his own agenda then helping and saving the victims of the storm. Frankly though, if people were on the screen and not a storm, the movie was at its weakest.
Visually speaking, this movie was pretty impressive. I have never been in a tornado, I don't know much about them. But I can tell you if this movie was accurate, they are horrible horrible things. We see vehicles and planes lifted into the air, people sucked up and shot out. One neat thing was every time the main group got a new person who was not named, they died shortly after. It was like they were filling the ranks with fodder so they would not have to kill anybody with a story. It frankly made the deaths meaningless and detracted from any sort of tension. Still seeing all the carnage was awesome, and the destruction it left in its path was very well portrayed.
The actors were fine, I think it was mostly the writing. Still with me not caring about the majority of the cast, some of that blame has to fall on them. There were multiple times when one of the main roles was in a bad situation, but I never really felt worried. It was not that I thought they wouldn't die, it was that I simply didn't care if they did. Not being able to build any attachment to them really made it hard to enjoy the movie. The whole journey just didn't matter to me.
Kind of a quick write up, but I am tired and I don't feel it deserves much more. Story was pretty bland, but the visuals tried their best to make up for it. The storm scenes were all pretty cool, and they kept me happy. I would say for a rental, why not. You will see some cool things, and you can fast forward if the in between bits start to bother you. I would never buy this film though.
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