Directed by: Bradford May
Starring: James van der Beek, Treat Williams, Marisol Nichols, Teri Polo, David James Elliott, Luke Perry, John Larroquette

If a movie is called The Storm, and is sold with an image showing Manhattan about to be drowned by a huge wall of water, you could certainly be forgiven for believing it was a disaster movie. But buyer beware: The Storm is basically a techno-thriller toying with the idea of weather manipulation, where the main threats to Our Hero’s life are uzi-wielding thugs, not tornados or tsunamis. It rains a lot, though. In fact, The Storm is one of the wettest movies I’ve seen this side of Hard Rain — and The Storm is almost twice as long, so you do the math.

James van der Beek plays Dr. Jonathan Kirk, a brilliant scientist with the Atmospheric Research Institute who is involved in a project to control the weather. Dr. Kirk’s altruistic goal is to find a way to limit droughts and thus famine. His boss, one Robert Terrell (Treat Williams), isn’t driven by quite as noble ideals, though. Terrell is involved with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who wants to use weather manipulation for strategic military purposes.

Electromagnetic disturbances surrounding the experiments make Dr. Kirk argue that the team needs to slow down and make sure there are no ill side-effects to the technology being used. Terrell on the other hand pushes for even more advanced tests, and Dr. Kirk quits the project, leaving a less principled colleague to do Terrell’s bidding. Dr. Kirk gets in touch with the media, intending to expose Terrell’s operation, but soon finds himself being framed for murder. As the continuing experiments play havoc with the global weather, and massive hurricanes move in on the United States, the one person who might come up with a solution finds himself on the run from both Terrell’s henchmen and the LAPD…

The Storm was originally broadcast as a two-part miniseries, and the main problem is that the rather predictable plot isn’t enough to fill out a 160-minute running time. There’s a lot of running around chasing each other, and quite a few murders along the way, while a couple of static sub-plots are tacked on to provide some emotional grounding. That doesn’t really succeed, though, because those characters — a paramedic and his pregnant wife, and a meteorologist and his bartending ex-girlfriend — are given little to do beyond speaking banalities about life and love.

Personally, I waited for the disasters to actually start happening. However, for about 120 of these 160 minutes there’s mostly heavy clouds and incessant rain. A little freak twister killing a homeless man and hoisting him into a tree is a sad event but doesn’t quite qualify as a disaster. A tornado ripping through Anchorage, Alaska, might do the trick — if we had gotten to see more than a fleeting second of it. We are told, through innumerable news reports, that all kinds of shit is happening around the globe, but we get to witness very little of it.

Things do pick up a bit in the disaster department during the last half-hour or so, as the massive hurricane that has been looming off the west coast for the entire film finally hits Los Angeles. The paramedic’s pregnant wife gets trapped in a flooded basement, and the bartender’s co-worker gets brained by an airborne car bumper. That’s about as good as it gets. Then Dr. Kirk manages to patch up the ”hole in the ionosphere” that was the cause of all the crazy weather and can focus on hitting on the LAPD detective that was chasing him.

The Storm is a reasonably slick production and features a bunch of recognizable actors, so the end result is watchable though never very fun and much too long. The visual effects are on the cheap side and mostly limited to churning clouds and the mysterious beams that Dr. Kirk and his colleagues aim into the sky.

Rating: 1/5

The plot revolves around a slave (Harington) who dreams of the day he can buy his freedom and marry his master’s daughter (Browning). However, the girl has already been promised to a corrupt Roman senator (Sutherland), while he’s been sold to another owner. And then there’s something about a volcano erupting…

Keep track of more upcoming disaster movies on the Coming Attractions page.

Promo picture for Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii.

So 2012 is over and done with, and despite the “Mayan prophecy” silliness the world apparently didn’t end. Which is fine with me.

For the better part of 2012 you could vote for your favorite disaster movie at this very site, and it is time to publish the result. So without further ado, your top 10 favorite disaster movies, like, ever:

1. The Poseidon Adventure – 20%
2. 2012 – 17%
3. The Towering Inferno – 9%
….The Day After Tomorrow – 9%
5. Earthquake – 8%
6. Titanic – 6%
7. Armageddon – 5%
8. Dante’s Peak – 4%
….Twister – 4%
10. Deep Impact – 2%
……Contagion – 2%

Okay, it’s 11. Basically, you seem to love the genre classics and Roland Emmerich. I certainly won’t argue with that, because I do, too.

So there you go. I’m celebrating by adjusting my rating of The Poseidon Adventure to 5/5, which it rightfully should have had all along. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Sharknado

Yes, it is what it sounds like. Those wacky guys over at the The Asylum have come up with a concept that is so gloriously over the top that the tagline simply reads “Enough said!”. Says the synopsis:

“When a freak hurricane swamps Los Angeles, thousands of sharks terrorize the waterlogged populace. And when the high-speed winds form tornadoes in the desert, nature’s deadliest killer rules water, land, and air.”

As always, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this actually will be as great as it sounds.

Head on over to Shock Til You Drop for the full poster.

Isolated from any larger context, the apocalypse plays out like fireworks, and the utopian social cooperation that typically follows in catastrophe cinema is unseen, as the clips loop back onto themselves.

So there you have it: disaster movies are art. Take that, highbrow cineasts.

Lost

In related news, Universal and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot are planning to offer up some competition with their own earthquake movie, titled Earthquake (or Untitled J.J. Abrams Earthquake Project, as IMDb puts it). Despite the reported title, this is not a remake of the 1974 Charlton Heston extravaganza. This project was hatched back in 2008, and the recent development is that Dustin Lance Black (Milk, J. Edgar) has been brought in to write a new screenplay.

Similarly-themed disaster movies trying to beat each other into cinemas? Oh my God, it’s 1998 all over again…

Directed by: David Warry-Smith
Starring: Eric Roberts, Jürgen Prochnow, Kaj-Erik Eriksen, Cali Timmins, Venus Terzo

It’s Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno, with Eric Roberts as the hero and Jürgen Prochnow as the bad guy! How could you possibly go wrong?

Actually, you can’t. The short version is that for a made-for-tv disaster thriller, this one is actually pretty decent. Browsing user reviews on IMDb turns up a few harsh pans, but those people can’t possibly have seen stuff like Terror on the 40th Floor or Ice Twisters.

The story starts off with an emergency call for an ambulance helicopter to aid a hiker who has apparently fallen and broken his leg in the woods outside Seattle. This turns out to be an evil plot, as the chopper is hijacked by a group of armed men led by tough guy Jürgen Prochnow and his teutonic accent. Also tagging along is Jürgen’s girlfriend, played by Venus Terzo.

Meanwhile, single dad Eric Roberts and his purple-haired son (Eriksen) arrive at a federal building downtown to pick up Eric’s girlfriend and her daughter, the four of them going to a basketball game. The girlfriend (Timmins) is a tour guide in the building and has one final group of tourists to take care of this afternoon. Eric and son tag along.

At the same time, the hijacked helicopter lands on the roof of the very same building, and Jürgen and his associates quickly overpower the security guards. It so happens that Jürgen is a disgruntled former federal agent who is now out for revenge, and intends to steal dollar bill printing plates from the U.S. treasury office in the building.

The first part of the operation goes according to plan – until the bandits run into the tour group. It turns out that Jürgen and Eric are former colleagues with a long history of mutual dislike. As the criminals’ cover is blown things start to go wrong. Half an hour into the plot the getaway helicopter crashes into the side of the federal building, starting a big fire and blocking access to lower floors. Almost simultaneously a leaking gas pipe causes the roof to catch fire as well. Now both bad guys and good guys are caught between two converging fires with no way out…

While starting out as your average action-thriller, Heaven’s Fire moves into pure disaster movie territory as the building catches fire. We have the classic collection of cliché personalities trapped in the crisis – in this case two obnoxious teens, an elderly couple, a supposedly cool dude and a consistently whining accountant – and a (small) sideplot teaching us that disasters are a great way to work out relationship problems. Highlights include a scene in a demolished stairwell where the tourist group has to climb across a burning abyss, and the climax offers up a fist-fight between Eric and Jürgen in a burning office as the two fires are about to merge. In all its genre-bound predictability, it’s quite entertaining.

I’m not going to say that this is a great film, because it isn’t, but it’s definitely above average for a made-for-tv disaster film. The primary weakness is the frequently terrible dialogue and to some degree the stilted delivery of same dialogue by parts of the cast. Heavily expository lines sounding like they were being read from cue-cards – you know what I’m talking about. (There’s an early scene in an elevator that should win some kind of award in that department.) That said, both Prochnow and Eric Roberts deliver good performances, while some of the supporting players in the tourist group go for straight over-acting instead.

There’s a certain drab quality to the visuals that practically screams “made -for-tv”, but otherwise production values aren’t too bad. Effects-wise, we’re treated to a moderate amount of CGI deployed with discretion and some respectable physical effects. The exterior shots of the burning skyscraper by night look pretty good, and there’s some really nice fire footage towards the end.

All in all, Heaven’s Fire is an entertaining little disaster movie that actually surpassed my expectations. The rating might be a tad on the generous side, but hey – it’s not an exact science.

Rating: 3/5

“[t]he film takes a first-person POV through video cameras and cell phones to tell the story of high school students who try to survive the worst tornado in U.S. history.”

The film is to be directed by Steven Quale who was second unit director on both Titanic and Avatar and made his feature film directorial debut with Final Destination 5. According to the IMDb entry, Arlen Escarpeta, also from FD5, is attached to star.

Could be interesting. And shaky.

Update August ’12: Casting has proceeded for this project, adding Richard Armitage (Captain America, The Hobbit), Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead) and Matt Walsh (Veep), among others.
Also, Category Six is now only known as “Untitled Steve Quale Tornado Thriller“, and a title change is probably a good idea because of this.

For more upcoming disaster films, check out Coming Attractions.

And apparently this is the same Skyscraper idea that was optioned by Universal back in 2008, pitched by one Mike Sobel. According to the original news report, the story

is set in the world’s first mile-high skyscraper, fictionally built in Chicago, and centers on the Donald Trump-style developer as well as on the daring crew that rushes in to save the tower when it starts to falter.

Some Towering Inferno potential here, perhaps? Walker will executive produce and star, with Neil H. Moritz acting as producer. No further details at this time.

CineTel Films are making sure this coming Christmas will be a complete disaster. Shooting has begun on The 12 Disasters of Christmas, starring Eureka’s Ed Quinn and directed by Steven R. Monroe. Here’s the short synopsis available at the moment:

When an ominous dark star appears in the sky on Christmas Eve, massive earthquakes and cataclysmic natural disasters shake the earth! Now a small band of heroes must come together to save the world!

Nothing brings holiday cheer like cataclysmic natural disasters, wouldn’t you agree? The film is slated for a Syfy premiere on December 23rd. Merry Christmas!

And the holiday disaster theme continues in the amazingly titled Independence Daysaster, also from CineTel, which has begun pre-production. No word on cast or crew yet. All we have is a promo poster and this short synopsis:

The 4th of July. America’s day of independence. A day for fireworks, celebrations, parades, and backyard barbecues. But this year, the residents of Moose Ridge are in for a holiday celebration they never expected…

And for our final piece of news this time, another effort from the above-mentioned Steven R. Monroe has entered post-production. End of the World stars Brad Dourif, Greg Grunberg och Neil Grayston and is, of course, headed for Syfy.

It’s the end of the world as we know it! Massive earthquakes violently shake cities and mysterious plasma spheres pummel the earth’s surface. Cries of ‘Armageddon’ echoes across the world as people are beyond terrified. A small group of survivors must equip themselves with everything needed to help them ride this disaster out. It’s the beginning of the end and earth’s only hope may lie in the hands of the most unlikely heroes.

I believe Grunberg and Grayston will play video store clerks, while Dourif is a scientist/sci-fi writer. IMDb calls it a comedy, and while we don’t really do comedy (except of the unintentional kind) here at Disaster Movie World, I figure what the heck.