Supercell (2023)
The chase is on
It’s soon to be done being winter around here, which means we can trade out all the annoying cold for some warm and wet. The nice part about warm and wet is that although wet can be annoying, the warm opens up the possibilities for the old outdoor movie nights. One of the movies I’ve been waiting to watch out there is the old classic one about tornadoes. This isn’t that one, but I first learned about it when my cuz told me about a movie that a storm chaser he watches on YouTube had some footage of his storms in - so of course we had to go and watch it at some point. Reviews online are pretty numerically mediocre, but let’s see just who it is that might have the wind blown out of their Supercell.
Foregoing story, do you like family drama and strong weather systems? If the answer to both of those were no, then you are already off to a bad start! The basic story of this movie is boy’s parents are storm-hunters, dad gets got by some solidly bad calls, and son grows up to want to continue the line of work despite the mother not wanting him to do it. He has some fancy tech his parents designed to hear the heartbeat of a storm, and sneaks away to go storm chasing with his not-really Uncle. Will he survive his attmempts? Will anyone else survive? How many times will he be left behind when a storm pops up?
There are characters here. I won’t really say they are all good. This is where we start getting into “I see why it hasn’t reviewed better by the masses” territory. You see, most movies want a likeable main character for watchers to get behind and root for, but to be honest our main kid here is kind of a jerk. It’s easier to get attached to the enthusiastic tornado chasers or the best friend teaching him to drive, or even his somewhat sour on the ordeal mother than it is to get behind the main character. He has moments where the characters enthusiasm for what hes trying to do shines through, and i don’t find it the actors fault at all really - but to be honest and to say it felt like the movie had real deserved payoffs with character developments I would believe I watched a different movie.
The actors usually feel like they are doing well with what they have. I don’t feel there’s anything I can really knock the actors for, as the movie as a whole largely makes me feel it’s a higher level problem than the individual actors. Most the time they can be pretty good, with a time or two where they feel perhaps a little flat or otherwise not emotive, but for the vast majority of things they don’t make you not want to see them and some of the interactions are quite good. The storms aren’t really all that much of a character here - yes, they exist in the movie, but unlike something like Twister where you have this almost adversarial character to them, the ones here are played much more along the lines of a real storm - it’s not out to get specific people, it’s just an event happening that the characters more often than not are inserting themselves into.
Ah yes, everyone knows storms cause Sepia-tone.
The music is the next thing I’d like to go into, because it helps encapsulate my thought on the movie at a higher level quite well. The music itself is good - it’s whimsical, it’s horror movie foreboding, and it’s a whole lot of decent orchestral music that feels like it belongs in an entirely different movie. It goes to say that perhaps on the top most level, things weren’t quite as ironed and fleshed out when putting things together. It has the elements of a good movie, but generally fails to deliver the nuance of it all that you would find in a better movie. For example - our scene to set up the kid running off to tackle storms on his own feels almost out of left field and overly aggressive for the character at that moment. The characters looking off at something in an impressed fashion comes of so well, but than other times an actor might look far more bored about their conversation than you would think. Likewise, a conversation might question something, only for the answer to be truncated to “because” and hand waved off like Destiny wrote it’s plot.
The costumes are all modern day style, so it’s really not a whole lot to stand out.That said, it blends in nicely to feel like a natural thing, even if multiple people seem to be quite fond of wearing the same outfit multiple days in a row. The vehicles are also quite mundane, as opposed to the stylish tank-type things we’d see in a movie about bank heists during storms. For the world it’s supposed to be, it all fits super smooth and looks the part, but since it’s so modern and familiar, I imagine that people just aren’t really getting that impressed by it.
The storms are likewise in a similar boat. What we see of them looks phenomenal, but we also don’t get an absolute ton of them. Really, there’s three of them in here as far as windy boys, but what’s there all looks great. Of course, at least two of them also create the wonderful sepia tone filter, but it doesn’t really diminish the nature-science enjoyment aspect. Destruction left behind is also reigned in for them - I think over the course of it the only real carnage is a few tossed cars, as opposed to the normally expected building devastation.
There is actual storm footage in here at times.
The movie isn’t horrible, but I do see why it’s got mediocre reviews. It’s the kind of movie where if it was on TV you’d probably find yourself watching it and not really complain. That being said, I can also see person who dropped movie-theater full price on it being a little bit upset over it - because it’s not horrible, but it’s not excellent either. It just slots itself right in the middle there, being perfectly fine but not super-impressing.