For the entire month of April, Cinefessions will be locked into The Asylum, reviewing films released by the famed studio. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout April you will get another review on a film released by The Asylum. April’s podcast will also be devoted to films from The Asylum, and you can decide which three will be reviewed right here. Today, Ashe tries to hold on for dear life as the 500 MPH Storm passes.


500 MPH StormTitle: 500 MPH Storm (2013)
Director: Daniel Lusko
Runtime: 90 minutes

Take one actor known for B-movies, Casper Van Dien, add in an actor who’s been getting quite a bit of decent work with Michael Beach, surround them with no-name actors, a shoddy script, terrible acting, awful special effects, and some of the worst dialogue I’ve heard in a while, and you end up with something resembling 500 MPH Storm.  The premise is that some company on one of the coasts, I’m assuming, has developed a weather control device that shoots out giant beams of light.  Instead of controlling the weather properly on its first outing, though, it creates a super storm that whips through the United States, killing everything in its path. It’s up to Casper Van Dien’s former scientist-turned-teacher to fix it while dodging extremely fake looking tornados and toting around a really annoying son. His wife’s not all that great at the whole acting thing either.

The dialogue is terrible.  No one in the film seems to want to be there, so the terrible dialogue isn’t given any effort, and falls lifeless even when they’re supposed to be running for their lives.  There are way too many moments where they try and cheese off that shock moment in Jurassic Park, or even Twister, where they see it coming towards them, yell run, and then jump in the car.  Then when whole buildings are being wiped off the map from the storm, they seek shelter from a tornado in a warehouse made of glass, and are safe there long enough to have yet another terribly written conversation.  The special effects are bad, and you never get to see the horrible things supposedly happening around the country.  All we get to see is lots of rain and the occasional excruciatingly bad shot of a tornado whipping after a car and not really seeming to do much damage at all.

I really do like Casper Van Dien but not even he can save this 500 MPH Storm.  He does his best when he can lay on a little ham to the role he’s in, and this is played straight by all involved when it should have absolutely been played more for laughs.  Michael Beach’s character, for being an expert, has the worst ideas out of everyone involved, and it’s supposed to be his project.  That doesn’t help with the realm of believability at all, which this film is sorely lacking.  By the end of the film I was rooting for the storm to wipe everything off my screen so I could feel like something happened here.  This was a decidedly terrible first choice for me to re-visit The Asylum, and while I’ve seen a few that came off as decent despite a few flaws, this is definitely not one of them.

one_star

Amazon-Buy-Small

Rent on Netflix