Au coeur de la tempête

STORM CELL is a bad disaster movie even by TV movie standards. It stars Mimi Rogers (THE X-FILES) as a dedicated storm chaser who must fight against time to save her family from a series of super-powerful twisters that threaten to wreck much of middle America, yet the film fails to build on that premise at any point.

Due to budgetary constraints, no doubt, this film ends up more as a family drama than a disaster flick. Much is made of Rogers' obnoxious and stuck-up teenage daughter who keeps getting herself into peril, to the degree that I was hoping Rogers would simply cut her losses and forget about the dumb kid; no such luck.

Meanwhile, a few scenes show a twister wreaking havoc on some homesteads with the aid of some dodgy CGI. The two plots never gel, there's no plan on the part of the heroes, they just sort of amble from place to place and survive mainly through luck. It's all very boring and uninteresting; I expected something cheesier, and more entertaining, from this genre, but it's almost laid back in it's approach. Watch out for the great Michael Ironside in a cameo role.

I was given the chance to sit down to watch the 2008 movie "Storm Cell" here in 2021. And since it was a movie that I hadn't already seen before, of course I took the time to sit down to watch it.

Now, with this being a natural disaster movie, I must admit that the movie could go either way; either be just another one of those lousy special effect disaster movies that is a disaster in itself, or it could actually prove to be an entertaining movie with proper special effects. And with the likes of Mimi Rogers and Michael Ironside on the cast list, I must admit that I had hopes for "Storm Cell".

Turns out that "Storm Cell", as written by writers Michael Konyves and Graham Ludlow just didn't have what it took to be a proper disaster movie. It wasn't a terrible movie, so I wouldn't categorize it in that particular genre of disaster movies that are so bad that they become terrible. However, the storyline told in "Storm Cell" was just horribly bland, and I never really got fully submerged and drawn into that particular storyline.

The movie was less than mediocre in terms of being entertaining, but at least it had heart and spirit, and that counted for something. Ultimately, though, then the lack of an interesting storyline just killed the movie off for me.

Visually then "Storm Cell" didn't really impress. The special effects were good enough, I suppose, albeit bordering on being inadequate at times, though. If you sit down to watch the 2008 movie "Storm Cell" and expect to be blown away - pardon the pun - by a display of amazing CGI and special effects, then you will find yourself sorely disappointed.

The acting in "Storm Cell" was adequate, although the character gallery was about as interesting as a field overgrown by weeds. The characters in the movie were rather bland and pointless, actually. Most of them didn't even display proper motivation, and the dialogue wasn't really all that impressive either, so that didn't help much.

Director Steven R. Monroe didn't manage to huff and puff enough to make a lasting impression with "Storm Cell", and it was a movie that had managed to elude my radar, and it is a movie that will just as quietly fade into oblivion.

My rating of "Storm Cell" lands on a mere three out of ten stars. There are far better disaster movies out there.

I'm a storm chaser, which means I'm usually avid for any sort of storm-disaster movie, no matter how stupid. But this one not only wasted the fifteen minutes I spent watching it, it's compelling me to waste yet more time writing this review. That's how strongly I feel about it.

In this day and age, with so many weather websites available, there's no excuse whatsoever for a writer not to go see what a tornado looks like on radar--clue: It's not a hurricane! And FYI, storms do not growl. Chasers and storm fans and TV watchers, oh my, do yourself a favor and rent Twister again instead.

This one hurt. And I'm usually a sucker for really bad Twister ripoffs made for cable. We've seen this plot before, twice. Estranged parent-child relationship, because said parent is too devoted to chasing that big storm. Parent is obsessed with storms because of a tragedy in their childhood. Parent predicts The Big One will hit right where estranged child lives. Child doesn't believe them. Child has has several tense emo moments with parent. Big tornado predictably hits, key characters survive, and everyone is happy. See "Devil Winds" and "Tornado Warning" for this by -the-numbers plot as well. Amusingly, they use global warming for an excuse to "move" Tornado Alley to the pacific northwest so they could shoot cheaply in Vancouver. As expected, the tornado effects are lackluster. The CGI crew just rendered the same tornado for every scene. I think what really got to me was the darkness of the movie. By that I do not mean a grim undertone to the story... but rather how literally dark the image was throughout. I spent a lot of time straining to make out various details like character faces and locales. The environment around a tornado can be very dark, but this was done throughout the movie. I can only recommend this to people who didn't think it could get any worse than Atomic Twister.

The actor's cell their soul-making this movie. Mimi Rogers. Playing April overacts (almost like a silent movie) as a storm chasing global warming fanatic. It is enough to give storm chasers a bad name. April has stormy eyes that flash of the sound of lies.

Sometimes this movie can be hail.

Elyse Levesque gets to play Dana the drama queen. Her character needs to be eaten by a crocodile, oops, wrong movie, a twister of fate.

Michael Ironside with over 250 credits gets to play James the evil building developer who wants to make a buck at everyone's expense.

We have to listen to dramatic trauma music all through the movie. It may be worth it to turn the sound off and use "closed caption".

Sit back and watch while eating your funnel cake.