Into the Storm (2014), PG-13, ★1/2

They are all running away from the tornado. 

Tornadoes are unpredictable only if meteorologists do not do their job properly as to where the tornadoes will be striking at any minute. But, Twister, a movie mainly focused from the storm chasers' point of view, is an entertaining movie with a few memorable characters from very good actors. This movie, however, feels like an overstuffed TV movie with no memorable characters and dialogue that is so silly that it needed another run in the computer or the typewriter.

The movie begins when four kids are hanging out in a car at night and witnessing transformers going out and hearing a clap of thunder and when one of the kids gets out of the car to record the catastrophe, they yell at him to get back in the car until the tornado descends on them, killing them.

We meet two groups of people. One group consists of Pete (Matt Walsh, the memorable doctor from The Hangover), Lucas (Lee Whitaker) and Jacob (Jeremy Sumpter). Pete is annoyed that they missed the event. In another van, Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies of The Walking Dead fame) and Dylan (Arlen Escarpeta) are not thrilled to be riding around with Pete, nor are the other two people. Allison has not been home to her 5-year-old daughter in months and she misses her and does not know when she will be back as they are tracking another storm in the area.

Another group of people is a bunch of high schoolers, juniors and seniors, recording either a time capsule, You Tubing, or a graduation video. Donnie Fuller (Max Deacon) has a crush on Katilyn (Alycia Debnam Carey) and his younger brother, Trey (Nathan Kress) makes fun of Donnie for not talking to her. Their father, Gary (Richard Armitrage) is the vice principal of the school and is distanced from the boys and is labeled as the father as the jerk.

There is a tornado on the path to the small town and gaining momentum as a graduation ceremony is underway. The students get soaked and an alert has been issued as the teachers and vice principal escort them to the school. The students and Gary keep their heads down as the tornado ignites and tears down a section of the school sucking in a few students out of the building. And, that's where the movie kind of gets started or does it get started?

Hang on!

The tornadoes are spectacular at an angle but as the movie progresses, it becomes a low-level repetitive film that gets boring and tiresome that it just becomes noise and people running around for cover and people filming the events. The movie does not blow my mind, no pun intended, because there's no education behind how the tornado is formed or how it becomes a tornado. It's just looking at a monitor. This will be a bad movie to take your kids to if you want a lesson of how tornadoes work.

All of the actors do what they can with their characters but they become either dull or stereotypically predictable as either the smart one, the dumb one, the arrogant one, the hot one or the jerky father. The dialogue is also as tepid as dishwater as you cannot take what they are saying to each other. The shaky camera footage gets a bit too distracting and unfocused as you cannot really enjoy a cheesy stormy experience like Twister. This movie goes down a notch in quality in terms of story, characters, and dialogue, but the storm sequences is a little exciting in the beginning but just becomes noise and debris on-screen with no inspiration.

*1/2