STORM
2005

STORM is a Swedish film that is very ambitious, effects-intensive and with fairly gory violence, so we can forgive a certain amount of the story’s pretentiousness and meandering. Narration fills us in on all of the characters. Visually lots of grays and blues, it reminded me at times of The Matrix and The X-Men films, especially at the beginning. Donny, a Swedish journalist sees a super-powered redhead chick chased by some creatures in a big opening fight.
The redhead seems to know everything about him. The main character hasn’t been able to feel sensations in his skin since an unremembered incident in his childhood. (Gee, do you think this will be a plot point later on?) He obviously has a destiny to fulfill, as in all these type of movies. When we first meet Donny, he talks about how he looks at women and commits their mental picture to memory, to use to masturbate to later, because his father told him that women were trouble.
The chasers break into his apartment looking unsuccessfully for something. Following the clues given to him by the broad, he finds a big warehouse full of gamers at computers. He still doesn’t believe this whole cosmic conspiracy, but in a nightclub, he meets another mysterious girl, who gives him a strange cube and then gets killed right in front of him, so he quickly becomes a believer. Trying to escape from the chasers, to blend in, he pushes his way into a stall and snorts some drugs the occupants are doing. Coming out of the bathroom, it appears that all the hot women are staring at him (is he taking a mental picture?)
Unexpected random odd and surrealistic touches litter the film, as do plenty of film segments that suggest homage to different films, like Se7en, Terminator, Metropolis and others. Donny momentarily breaks the fourth wall, stares right at the camera and asks, “What do you want out of life?” There’s a segment where they are sucked into the comic book that reminded me of that Britney Spears video. Some gorgeous scenes seem like the filmmakers included them just because they wanted to/or could; they look fabulous (like the chick cart wheeling through laser alarm system) but are not terribly necessary to the plot.
Donny goes to the police station, where they have a wanted poster of him (from the gamer shootout already?) and he gets shot. Or was it just a hallucination? As you can see, it’s got that Sunshine of the Eternal Mind – Matrix – Philip K. Dick kind of questionable reality going on.
He goes to visit his friend, a horror/sci-fi fanboy, since he’s the only one who would possibly believe him. But Fanboy’s pissed that he hasn’t returned his videos of Funhouse, Akira, and Phantasm 2 and refuses to let him hide out at his place until he’s returned them! Donny finds a comic book on the train called STORM, and realizes that it’s his life, and he’s starring in it!
In a flashback, as a kid he talks a friend (who has a crush on him) into pulling down her panties and inserts a bong up her snatch. Then he’s frozen to the spot as she has her revenge on his modern self, but I guess it’s just a hallucination. At the graveyard, he locks his little brother in a mausoleum – it seems he wasn’t a very nice kid. What all of this back-story has to do with the movie’s mystical mumbo-jumbo is anybody’s guess, and whose grave was his brother going to lay flowers at? About half way in, it starts to drag, and I started to care less about the exceedingly convoluted story.
The main character Donny does several things that are a bit off (drugs, rape, talks about masturbation, etc.) and wouldn’t be included in an American film, for fear of offending and making him less sympathetic, but it does make him seem fallible and normal, at least to this one-man focus group. Actor Eric Ericson’s commitment to the role shines through; and makes a lot of this melodramatic mess work through his intensity, even if he does seem to only have two expressions. Other characters are less convincing, but Ericson is always watchable.
For a film so full of violence and action, it’s strangely static, and kind of hokey and self-important, with some real cool inventive visuals that don’t seem to serve any purpose (I’m thinking of the Glass ranger.) It also ends abruptly, and the story threads don’t have a big payoff. Like the fanboy character, - I thought surely he would get some kind of comeuppance at the end. The supernaturally powerful bad guy is anticlimactically destroyed, poof-ing into a million CG pieces. Donny finds out what happened to his sister, and that is the conclusion of the story.
The first half had a really good start, with a lot of mystery, none of which is really explained. I mean, his personal psychological history is explained, but not the mythical stuff in the story that they went to all that trouble to introduce.
At the end, the sister kisses him, and says “Keep that feeling in your heart right there, and pass it around”, then just disappears. Huh? And then the cops show up. And that’s the end. Wha? Only we’ve established earlier Donny is still wanted for murder (hey, if you’re still reading you deserve a spoiler!) So is he going to get way, be on the run forever? I guess we have to read the comic book. And actually, if you think of it as a comic book, it’s easier to “get” it, and be less critical with it’s wild characterizations, way-too-busy plotting, half explained mysticisms and super-powered battles. It’s very pretty to watch, and writer/director duo Marland/Stein do a fine job of making it look like a champagne film on a beer budget. I could have used a bit less philosophy, but what the hell, it’s manic, surprising and jam-packed with eye candy, so shut up and watch….
Available in the U.S. from www.TLAReleasing.com.

-Hysteric Eric