Storm Cell (2008) starring Mimi Rogers, Robert Moloney, Andrew Airlie, Ryan Kennedy, Elyse Levesque, Michael Ironside directed by Steven R. Monroe Movie Review

Storm Cell (2008)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Mimi Rogers in Storm Cell (2008)

Weathering the Storm

Ever since she was a teenager April (Mimi Rogers - Big Nothing)and her younger brother Sean (Robert Moloney - Secrets of an Undercover Wife) witnessed their parents killed during a tornado she has devoted her life to studying storms. But her devotion has not come without its problems from the media making her out to be a fanatic to a strained relationship with her daughter Dana (Elyse Levesque) who is sick and tired of her mum's storm chasing and constant monitoring of the weather charts. Whilst trying to make it up to Dana with a visit to see her brother Sean and his wife in Seattle they come under threat from a sudden formation of storms in the area.

If you've seen one bad weather movie you've seen them all or at least that is how it often feels especially when it comes to disaster movies about storms and tornadoes. And that is part of the problem with "Storm Cell" as the storyline is mostly predictable from are storm chaser devoted to her career ever since a childhood disaster to the strained relationship with a child because of that devotion. In between all this familiarity we do have some extra bits such as when April visits her brother she bumps into local weather man Travis who many years earlier she knew whilst in college but it just adds a minor distraction; a slight air of romance, an obvious twist and an opportunity for Andrew Airlie to show up in a nice guy role.

Elyse Levesque in Storm Cell (2008)

But over familiarity is not the only problem to affect "Storm Cell" as it also suffers from numerous TV movie flaws; under developed characters, basic dialogue, no depth or realism. I could go on but it is again a case that "Storm Cell" feels like any other bad weather disaster movie made for TV and it shares the same style of special effects when it comes to the various storms which to be honest are not terrible but look like the same ones used in other TV movies.

The worst thing is that when it comes to the characters the poor writing and cliche dialogue just combine to make no one particularly likeable. Okay so peripheral characters such as Sean's pregnant wife Molly is nice but the central pairing of April and Dana are not that likeable and at least one of them needed to be to make us feel some sort of connection to them.

What this all boils down to is that "Storm Cell" is just a typical made for TV weather based disaster movie which uses familiar cliches, familiar special effects and is predictable from start to finish.


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