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For those who love survival movies that double as character studies, a la Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away (2000), Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (2010) and J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost (2013), and would be interested in seeing the struggle from the female perspective — in this case, Naomi Watts — then Małgorzata Szumowska’s new film Infinite Storm might be for you. If you like the adventure suspense of something like Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest (2015), then Infinite Storm could interest you as well.
If you just want to see a lot of atmospheric, aesthetically pleasing exterior cinematography, there’s plenty of that here, too. The only problem is that the creators of the new nature-set journey couldn’t seem to decide if Infinite Storm should be a somber study on two people grieving, or a natural disaster schlock.
In mid-2000s New Hampshire, Pamela Bales (Watts) is a single, 53-year-old woman who spends her days hiking through Mt. Washington when she’s not working with the local search & rescue organization. While out one ordinary day in the snowy and windy wilderness, Pam notices footprints that look much closer to ordinary sneakers than proper hiking boots — meaning there is someone out in the mountains in completely ordinary clothes. Pam instantly switches gears and attempts to find and save the possible victim’s life before nature gets to them first.
Billy Howle co-stars as ‘John,’ the anonymous, suicidal drifter Pam comes across; Denis O’Hare is her friend and colleague, Dave; and Eliot Sumner both appears on screen and composes the movie’s theme song, ‘Angel.’ As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, Infinite Storm has some great, voyeuristic camera work from cinematographer Michał Englert that’s striking on the big screen.
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Watts carries the feature well as the lead, unsurprisingly, since she’s usually consistently good on film. The first half is your typical man vs. natural disaster flick, with Pam faced with snow and extreme winds. Once John shows up, we get the type of action schlock along the lines of Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger (1993) and Martin Campbell’s Vertical Limit (2000). By the time we’re in the third act of Infinite Storm, we finally learn more about our two characters’ emotional predicaments.
One thing that’s a little confusing is, throughout the film, there are flashbacks of Pam’s past home life. But one of them, near the end, looks too similar to the present-set scenes, and it might confuse the audience as to whether the sequence is relevant to the past or the current events. There’s also some woodenly blunt expository dialogue in a few scenes with Pam talking to herself, which is supposed to clue us in on hiking activity some viewers might be unfamiliar with. It feels unnatural, since Pam, obviously, wouldn’t be telling herself these things in real life.
In general, I’m not a huge fan of survival films, since there’s usually only two or three ways the plot can end. But if this is your kind of thing, Infinite Storm might do the trick, presently.
Do you like survival/natural disaster flicks? Does Infinite Storm look up your alley? Tell us in the comments!
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