The Storm

A real-world tragedy deserves a respectful recounting of events. But this movie opted to reïmagine the dramatic Christmas flood of 1953 in an absurd fictional storyline where the plot and the characters are so shallow you start wondering what the problem is. De Storm fails as a historical film, fails as a drama and fails as a thriller.

The film promotes the dated idea that "a woman needs a man no matter how strong she is". Additionally, it praises idiotic actions of stupidity as "heroic rescue attempts". None of the actors managed to deliver their lines with any level of truth. And I would not have been able to muster the two stars I rated it if the special effects hadn't been this decent.

De Storm, in essence, is an insult to the victims of the flood and a disgrace to Dutch filmmaking. Tedious, disastrously dated and offending.

I might be a bit prejudiced, because I am from The Netherlands, where this all happened. I've seen this movie this weekend, I was overwhelmed by its reality. I didn't see it all happen, but some folks in the theater did, and they were crying about all memories coming back. This means, in my humble opinion, that the movie is very realistic, even with a budget so low, game-studios can't make a decent game with this amount of money. I guess that the people in New Orleans also need to see this movie, so they know why the Dutch are now helping with their struggle against water. Watch this movie, it might be an Oscar-winner! Also keep checking out Dutch movies, some of them are real gems. Try to watch movies like TBS, Van God Los and Lek. These are some of the best Dutch movies. And of course, Zwartboek, Blackbook(by Paul Verhoeven!)!

I looked forward to this movie, because of the true story of the Storm in 1953. I was very disappointed. The flood came immediately in the beginning, you didn't even know the characters yet. The flooding itself was good to see. However, the main character Julia was very unlikeable and the acting was terrible. There was no emotion in her acting, even though her sisters and mother were dead and here baby was missing. The same look for the hole movie. The storyline was really unbelievable and the end.. well, you should see it to believe how terrible it is. The characters were in the water for a long time, that would not have been possible because of the temperature of the water. Maybe it was because I had too high expectations, but as i said, I was really disappointed.

I've seen this movie yesterday, also during the Film by the Sea festival in Vlissingen.

I really liked how the movie started, lots of tension building up and the special effects are very well done. If you want to learn more about the 1953 flood though, then this movie might not be the best choice. I was hoping for a more in depth movie about this subject, but the movie focuses more on a personal story that happens during (and partly because of) the flood.

The overall acting was mediocre, and only Sylvia Hoeks as our main character seems to be displaying some genuine emotions. The first thing I noticed was that the actors use almost no local dialect ('Zeeuws'). Even though it's not very realistic and probably done to appeal for a larger (Dutch) audience, I liked the choice.

If you had red the book, you do not want to watch this film. It is a huge disappointment in comparing to the detailed description of the book. I doesn't come close to the (much better) storylines and the feeling they want to bring over. Overall bad acting, no emotions noticeable, very very fast told, unbelievable how they made such a good book to such a horrible movie.