Tornado Warning

We all know the drill on SyFy channel movies. You can't compare them to anything other than previous SyFy channel movies. With shoestring budgets and B & C grade actors (mostly C), they crank out their "original" movies with regularity and zero surprises.

Alien Tornado did not break this tradition. This one was just slightly on the low side of the scale. The script was ridiculous, the characters thoroughly unappealing (I'm used to that), and the CGI SFX were only average. Now that home PC's with the latest processors can do the third level CGI that SyFy utilizes, you'd think they'd use the savings to ramp up the writing or actor expenditures. They don't. This one didn't even have any former stars in a cameo role.

The only reason to watch these things is because you're stuck at home and nothing else is on. And, of course, because you can figure out the plot by the first commercial break, and after that you can leave the room for a few minutes at any time and not worry about missing anything vital to the story.

This one was so completely silly and contrived that even hard core fans of SyFy movies will be disappointed. Not to worry. They'll be punching out another one in a few weeks. Ice Twisters vs. Alien Tornado perhaps? Paul Birkett wrote both. You know he's thinking about it.

On a windy day in the country, pretty in her pony-tail Stacey Asaro (as Kelly Walker) gets off the school bus and checks her mailbox. Thrilled at receiving great SAT scores, Ms. Asaro shares the news with scruffy-looking, bearded daddy Jeff Fahey (as Judd Walker). He doesn't seem as excited. Although she claims to be 17-years-old, daughter Asaro probably lies to cover being in high school for several extra years. She should be both unashamed and happy, and Mr. Fahey should be jumping for joy. Their celebration is interrupted when the wind builds to a dangerous tornado. Meanwhile, in Chicago, storm-chaser and climate expert Kari Wuhrer (as Gail Curtis) detects a tornado on her laptop. These tornadoes are not normal. They glisten with green light, shoot out lightning bolts and move around like they're a form of intelligent life...

Syfy should probably stop trying to make serious science-fiction and just concentrate on comedies. That doesn't mean sci-fi movies can't be made on a low budget. The Syfy channel simply doesn't know how to do them. In fact, good science-fiction films can be made on even lower budgets. The aforementioned players take their assignment much too seriously, although the two leading women wear tight tank tops. The name appearing most often in the credits is Ken Badish, with Jeff Burr directing. They succeed mostly with cartoon-like villain David Jensen (as Armstrong) and likewise toned Sheriff Willard E. Pugh (as Norman "Norm" Mackey). The one who really captures the true worth of her surroundings is corpulent Claire Conti (as Denise Gordon). Her performance as the bubbly, obese climate assistant is a tornado of fun.

** Alien Tornado(2012-04-21) Jeff Burr ~ Jeff Fahey, Kari Wuhrer, Stacey Asaro, Willard E. Pugh

I can't believe this got funded to produce. Bad acting, predictable dialog, poor script, and terrible cgi. I'm used to pure dribble from the SciFi network but this is so bad I couldn't watch it at all. It tries to be the X-files but is as trite, cliché ridden as I have ever seen. Avoid this as at all costs, pure waste of time. Everyone involved with this project should be deeply embarrassed. I plead the 5th--the 5th of bourbon it would it take me to get numb enough to sit through this crap. It has no redeeming values whatsoever. Who would even want to promote this? A Smurfs marathon could only rot your brain worse. I never write reviews but I couldn't be silent on this one.

Giving a bad review to a SyFy movie is not really a challenge. It's so blatantly obvious thing to do that one has to think twice if it is even worth the time to type the bashing these films more often than not deserve. I'm beginning to feel like this is SyFy's strategy: keep churning out junk under the guise of light entertainment, because there are enough people that kinda enjoy passing their time watching these films and then there are those, like myself, who end up watching these in hopes something has changed.

Nothing has changed here. The images and the characters both are flat, the CGI is sub-par, and the script would again benefit from proofreading. Not that I don't trust the writers' English skills, but maybe a few more brains in the works would help in creating more passable builds of suspense, more pronounced motivations for characters etc. You know, a bit more oomph than tornadoes that are of alien origin coupled with the stock characters one can expect in such circumstances.

I've seen worse acting, and I've spent my time more foolishly, but to say that seeing a certain film is NOT the stupidest thing one can do is not really a compliment, now is it?

I'll be honest and say I wasn't expecting much from Alien Tornado, and that after seeing it it was neither better or worse than I was expecting. The coolest and most exciting set piece is the destruction of the city, there is some evidence tension and the effects are a step above the crude ones I was expecting in this scene. Jeff Fahey is also decent, as is the concept which is pretty original and showed potential for a watchable movie. However the rest of the movie doesn't show much promise. The effects are not the crudest I've seen but they're hardly great either. The editing is choppy at best, and the movie is dully lit. The script is very hackneyed and doesn't give the actors much to work from, the story is silly, contrived and dull, the characters are unappealing and stereotypical(a lot of them are severely underdeveloped as well) and Fahey aside the rest of the acting suffers from the banality of the writing. Overall, a bad movie but not terrible. 3/10 Bethany Cox