Mary Elizabeth Winstead Enters 'The Cellar'; Sarah Wayne Callies to 'Pay the Ghost'; Judy Greer goes to 'Fresno'

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has joined John Goodman in Bad Robot's small-budget thriller, The Cellar. Formerly titled Valencia and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the film centers on a "woman who wakes up underground after a terrible car accident and fears she’s been abducted. Her captor, a doomsday prepper, warns her that a terrible chemical attack has left the outside world uninhabitable but as tensions rise she decides she must escape regardless of the terrors that await outside."[Deadline]

So Into the Storm didn't kick up much dust at the box office, that won't stop ex-The Walking Dead star Sarah Wayne Callies from taking on another feature role. She's joining Nicolas Cage in his latest potential stinker, Pay the Ghost. Uli Edel, director of the awesome Baader Meinhof Complex, is at the helm of this one about  "a professor whose young son goes missing during a Halloween parade in New York City. One year later he begins to sense his son’s presence and uncovers clues leading to a vicious and vengeful ghost that surfaces each Halloween to abduct children". Callies will play a "whip-smart" environmental attorney and Cage's estranged wife. [Deadline]

Judy Greer and Natasha Lyonne will star as siblings in Fresno, the new comedy from But I'm a Cheerleader director, Jamie Babbit. The film follows "lonely but stoic lesbian Martha (Lyonne), whose sister Shannon (Greer), a sex addict with no impulse control and a long history of poor decisions, winds up back in Fresno cleaning hotel rooms with her. When they accidentally kill a guest, the sisters are forced to confront their unpleasant co-dependent relationship." Sounds a little like Sunshine Cleaning meets Your Sister's Sister, a combination I can definitely get into.

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Review: 'Into the Storm', Starring Sarah Wayne Callies and Matt Walsh

Hurricanes can get pretty strong and insane, and even though people living in hurricane regions have gotten used to them, they're still forces to be reckoned with. Oh, wait, Into the Storm isn't a hurricane movie. Although, it might have been a much better one had it focused on another kind of natural storm rather than practically ripping off Twister in a documentary-style film that is wooden, has no real stakes, and is just an excuse to make the largest tornado funnel ever, and gives the incarnation of the world-eating Galactus from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer a run for his money. 

There isn't much of a story to go on here, but whatever narrative there is will be heavily summarized to prevent spoilers, though, spoiler alert, there aren't any. Allison (Sarah Wayne

Callies), Pete (Matt Walsh) and their small team are chasing tornadoes. Allison, to study them, and Pete to make a documentary about them and rake in the cash from them. They're

in a place called Silverton when a tornado hits and they're caught right in the middle of the action, their only real weaponry being fancy cameras and a tank-like vehicle that roots itself to the ground to prevent from being taken away by the intense twister winds. 

Donnie (Max Deacon) is shooting a time capsule video at the request of his father Gary (Richard Armitage). What are your hopes and dreams for yourself 25 years from now? That is the question he poses. Though we don't really see much of that as Donnie bails on filming his high school's graduation ceremony to help out his crush Kaitlin (Alycia Debnam Carey), giving over the project to his smart-ass brother Trey (Nathan Kress). What do all the storm chasers and the Silverton family have in common? Well, for one, they're all constantly tied to their cameras. Also, they get caught in the same tornado, as one twister turns into two, and three, and four... and well, you get the point. 

The film is shot in the way of a documentary, with the character's names and their jobs appear at the bottom of the screen at the beginning of the film. I'm pretty sure the director's intent to make it a documentary within a documentary sounded fantastic in his head, only the intensity of Hollywood fiction got in the way and it turned into awful melodrama and tried to sustain a story that's as unstable as a tornado they try to run from. 

The story is wooden, the characters as bland and boring as dry toast, and the personal stakes practically non-existent. It might have even served the story better had they actually made the movie a documentary instead of something the filmmakers seem to have no vested interest or passion in and cut something together to make it look legit. Ok, ok, that's a bit harsh, but the film isn't at all near to being average. There's no depth, and for a story that's about a natural disaster that people have experienced, it's rather annoying to not even remotely try to make it something decently watchable. 

Ultimately, there are too much debris in the way to make Into the Storm an entertaining or intriguing watch. It tries, and fails miserably, at giving us something resembling a moving story about natural disasters, the people caught in them, and the destruction they leave behind, but all the drama and tension between characters, and even the storms themselves feel contrived and tacky in the larger scheme of things. Stiff, with no cohesive story or personal stakes. 

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Second Trailer for 'Into the Storm' Hits HARD!

We spend so much time inventing monsters like Godzilla to destroy our towns that we forget that nature is the baddest mo'fo on the monster block. Having never been in a tornado, or really any natural disaster I can speak to the accuracy of Into the Storm's disaster scenes but damn is it intense. Using a hybrid of what seems to be high-grade found footage type shots and standard epic long shots to get the big stuff Into the Storm looks downright terrifying. Like the child of Day After Tomorrow and Twister but with alot more reality this looks like one of those paranoia inducing films that will have you taking those sever weather warnings a bit more seriously. Oh, hey, it's Lori from The Walking Dead! She cleans up nice!

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Deadly Tornadoes Strike in First Trailer for 'Into the Storm'

There's a good chance you've never heard of Into the Storm, the upcoming disaster flick from Final Destination 5 director, Steven Quayle. It features no big names, and looks like the kind of film Roland Emmerich makes in his spare time. But Warner Bros. has high hopes for it, and they're starting to spread the word with this new trailer.

Starring Richard Armitage, Jeremy Sumpter, Matt Walsh, and The Walking Dead's Sarah Wayne Callies, the film takes place in the small town of Silverton on a day in which they are devastated by a series of deadly tornadoes. Meanwhile, storm chasers get in on the action while more sensible folks find cover from the unpredictable cyclones.

Are we sure this isn't just a mash-up of all the Final Destination opening death scenes? It's obvious why Quayle was hired for this, and maybe when Into the Storm opens on August 8th it'll be the silly popcorn flick it appears to be.


Into the Storm - Official Teaser Trailer by Dread Central

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