Movies
[Review] ‘Into the Storm’ Feels Like Lazy Filmmaking
I love disaster movies. In my mind, The Day After Tomorrow is the Citizen Kane of disaster flicks: it is a worldwide event; a significant portion of the population is wiped out; and the main disaster spawns all sorts of little disasters. Then, when they run out of disasters, they throw in a pack of hungry wolves!
Into the Storm is nowhere near becoming a classic like The Day After Tomorrow. While it has some good disaster elements, they are few and far between. The “plot” follows a group of storm chasers who are, well, chasing storms. On the civilian side is a father and son who are fighting to find and rescue his eldest son, who has sneaked off to help a girl he likes with a video project. There is an extremely pointless third group of characters that are Jackass meets Duck Dynasty. I think they are meant to be comic relief. They do not succeed. The characters are flat and interchangeable because the “main character” is the monstrous tornado.
These are all stock characters in stock situations, which I am fine with – hell, that is what I want out of a disaster flick. But the film is meant to be a “found footage”-type movie – and it fails miserably. I am not a huge fan of found footage, but like anything, if it is done well, I can appreciate it. Director Steven Quale (whose only other narrative feature directing credit is Final Destination 5) fails to follow the basic logic behind found footage films. Frequently, especially in the first act of the film, we switch between found footage and traditional third-person narrative camera with no warning, no reason, and no possible way a camera could be shooting. Quale seems to think that if there are 25 cameras hooked up to the storm tank, then that will just take care of any possible shot and he can go ahead and shoot as he wishes. But there are numerous wide shots that have no earthly place in found footage. The footage all looks like it was shot with the same camera, whether it is a professional storm chaser’s rig or a cheap GoPro. The idea seems to be that this is the final documentary about this massive storm system, but we have footage from cameras that were sucked up into the tornados. The end result is lazy filmmaking that really pulled my attention away from the simple plot.
Into the Storm is not a good movie; it is not meant to be. But as a disaster flick, it is below average. The disasters aren’t as big as 2012 (though there is a reasonably impressive fire tornado); the atmosphere isn’t as insane as Aftershock; and it has less of a plot than Twister. Disaster movie fans are the only ones who should bother with this flick, and even then, I wouldn’t rush to see it.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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