Metacritic reviews

The found-footage disaster flick Into the Storm is “Twister’’ for dummies, but by no means is that an insult. The new film is enormous fun if you’re in the right mood.

It's hard to imagine any movie ever topping this one's depiction of killer tornadoes laying waste to the Midwest.

Into the Storm captures the magnificence of tornadoes, their awful beauty when they set down, the devastation they wreak, and the enormity of their consequences. The film features a rich array of well-developed characters – including the storm itself – which makes it ever more involving as it unfolds.

Not all of it makes sense, but for disaster movie fans, Into the Storm has enough destruction to go around.

Into The Storm is an uncanny valley disaster movie — not as consciously cheesy and cheap as something like "Sharknado 2," but built around a similar equation of unreality and gratification.

As clumsy as Quale is with the sequences of people shouting exposition back and forth, or delivering teary Blair Witch-style goodbyes into a camera that would have died long before its operators, he handles the CGI action with breathless intensity.

As impressive as the effects can be, as effective as the blend of TV news helicopter POV shots, security camera footage, cell-phone video and storm chaser images mimicked here turn out, the human stories are given short shrift in this “spend our budget on effects” action picture.

There are many instances of questionable logic in Into the Storm, but the most persistent is the film's unexplained assumption that tornado-hunting is a growth industry.

Nobody watches a disaster movie starring digital tornadoes expecting Oscar Wilde. But Into the Storm, directed with bland efficiency by Steven Quayle of "Final Destination 5," reminds us that unless a movie establishes certain base-line levels of human interest, it runs the not-unentertaining risk of coming out squarely in favor of its own bad weather.

Even within the spinning cylinder of mediocrity that is Into The Storm, there are some minor pleasures to be had. Those are mostly found in Walsh, who is probably best known for comedic supporting turns, but makes the most with what is nearly a leading man part here.