Supercell

Almost everything about this movie reminded me of adventure movies from the late 70s to early 90s:

• A classical score as if it was E. T.

• Cinematography as if it was Close Encounters of the Third Kind

• Production design as if it was Back To the Future

• Even the characters and the dialogs

It was like a magical nostalgic trip. And while the superficial topic was not really important to me personally, they used it as a vehicle to provide all the above mentioned qualities and to distract from the underlying light family drama.

Will I watch it again? Most probably not because there are many other productions to watch instead, and I would rather watch the original movies from the 80s again. (Hence no 8 points.)

Do I regret it to have seen it? No because I enjoyed the relaxing mood it got me into. (Hence at at least 6 points.)

Would I recommend it to others? Yes if I knew that the person could relate to the nostalgia, I tried to describe in this review. (Hence 7 points.)

But I would not recommend it to people who expect a tornado disaster movie.

Well, I have to say that I was expecting a tad more from this 2023 disaster movie titled "Supercell", especially since it was a brand new movie and having a cast ensemble with some fairly established names on it.

All I knew about "Supercell", when I sat down to watch it was that it was about what the title of movie indicates. So I figured that chances were that it would be a good movie at least. So of course I opted to watch what director Herbert James Winterstern had to offer.

Writers and Anna Elizabeth James and Herbert James Winterstern delivered a watchable enough script for the movie. However, I have to say that it was a fairly generic plot, and in terms of excitement and thrills, then "Supercell" just didn't have what it took. It might have huffed and puffed, but it was not with much force.

And I am rather surprised at how generic and nondescript "Supercell" turned out to be, especially with the likes of Skeet Ulrich, Alec Baldwin and Anne Heche on the cast list. The acting performances in the movie were fair enough, but the character gallery was somewhat monotonous, and I didn't really care if something were to befell the characters or not.

Visually then "Supercell" was okay. The special effects were bland actually, and I wasn't impressed.

If you enjoy movies about tornadoes, then the 1996 movie "Twister" is still the best choice.

My rating of "Supercell" lands on a four out of ten stars.

If after seeing the poster and reading the synopsis you thought that this was probably a (very) low budget version of Twister, you were right. It's sufficient if you must kill some time and there's nothing else at hand, but you certainly won't choose it for a re-watch any time soon. The story is thinner than thin, the acting is mediocre if I want to be generous, the special effects are hardly there. The script is not annoyingly bad, mostly because it's a soulless copy of other similar movies. Not much to remember, it's a movie as light as a feather. One dimensional characters do exactly what you expect them to do, and then the movie ends.

This was Anne Heche's last film before her tragic death in a car accident, so what a great pity for her it couldn't have been better.

Alec Baldwin plays Alec Baldwin, what happened to him - he used to be such a Leading Man, think Hunt for Red October and even 3rd Rock from the Sun and ... this. I guess he needs to feed all those kids that he can't seem to stop producing. Someone should tell him about birth control.

However, the guy who played the kid was the absolute worst thing about this movie. Supposedly highly intelligent, he just looked and acted like a dumb idiot all the way through. Such bad casting.

I liked Skeet Ulrich though even though I hardly recognised him.

Like others, I was expecting it to be a newer Twister, but they missed the mark. It was just dull and meandering around. Lots of inconsistencies throughout and barely showing any action.

Like Twister it centered around a parent who had been killed in a storm and was about storm chasing and using a gadget that would do something to help early storm detection (although they never really explain what the heck it does).

That is where the similarities end, the rest of a kid trying to discover more about his dad and doing so by being fairly annoying. There are much better storm movies out there including Into the Storm or even the Hurricane Heist which isn't great, but more entertaining.