Super Twister - DVD

Film: Jason Newmar (David Sutcliffe) is annoyed: it's bad enough that he has to babysit a group of students who have been given detention. The fact that his own son Will (Brett Dier) is also one of these students doesn't make things any easier. But Jason doesn't know yet that his son will play an important role on this day. Suddenly a huge tornado breaks loose, which seems to be no ordinary storm. Rather, it seems to bring powerful electrical discharges with it, which not only paralyze power and cell phone networks, but also burn people caught in the storm in fractions of a second. Young researcher Carolyn (Erica Cerra) and her colleague Rod (David Lewis) find out that the Super Twister is an interstellar storm, the kind that actually only occurs on Jupiter. For Earth, the storm could mean the imminent end. But of all things, a science project by Will and his school friend Megan (Luisa D`Oliveria) could save humanity from impending doom.

Super Twister is a typical production of the US channel SyFy: low budget, a script not exactly imbued with great logic, sometimes quite talentless actors and not always convincing, quite obviously computer generated effects. Director Sheldon Wilson, who has already directed several such works, has once again directed a very simple B-movie, which is filled with several dramaturgical clichés. But since he doesn't even try to hide that, his disaster thriller has a decent entertainment factor that makes the fight against the interstellar storms entertaining, fun trash.

The actors are admittedly nothing more than walking clichés. Nevertheless, Mitch X-Files Pileggi as a slightly crazy tinkerer, Erica Cerra (Eureka) as an attractive researcher or David Sutcliffe (Gilmore Girls) do their thing surprisingly well, given the rather harebrained script. The Canadian location is quite atmospheric and the effects are, at least in places, quite decent for the low budget that was available to the makers. Sure, the movie is still far from being really good. But sometimes it can be a lot of fun to be sprinkled by completely pointless works like this one. And this SyFy production provides plenty of fodder for that.

It's just amusing how unrestrained Wilson is here in juggling even the most stale clichés, how he tries to tell a completely stupid story in a fairly serious way, and how he lays waste to the world without really showing the audience much of it. If you take this too seriously, if you're looking for quality entertainment here and are bothered by the illogic of the interstellar storm theory, you'll have a hard time liking Super Twister. But if you expect nothing more than fun B-movie entertainment and can rather be amused by the obvious weaknesses of such films than be bothered by them, then you can definitely enjoy this stormy work.

Picture + Sound: The technical realization of the film is on the whole successful. The image sharpness is in many moments on a very good level and also the color mixing and the contrasts can convince. Only in faster camera pans and in darker sequences are small weaknesses such as dragging effects or deficiencies in the detail representation. Overall, however, the picture quality is on a really good level for a TV movie. The sound has some well-mixed surround effects here and there, which provide decent dynamics especially when the storms appear. The dialogue is mixed rather centrally and blends in a bit more harmoniously with the action in the original English version than in the German language version, which is a bit more powerfully mixed overall. Good.

Extras: In addition to the trailer and other program tips, the DVD still has a nearly 17-minute promotional making of (without subtitles) to offer.

Conclusion: Super Twister is a quite entertaining B-Movie, which can please not exactly with deep logic, but with a decent fun factor. If you like simple SyFy productions, can overlook clichés and an obviously low budget, you will certainly find something to like in this disaster thriller starring some familiar TV faces. The DVD of this TV production is technically well done and also offers the viewer a typical promo making of

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp