Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska
Written by Joshua Rollins and Pam Bales (based on the life of)
Starring Naomi Watts, Denis O’Hare and Billy Howle
Runtime: 104 minutes
In theaters March 25th

by Matt McCafferty, Staff Writer

When it comes to the survival movie, as an audience, we love to put ourselves in the shoes of the survivalists on screen. The obvious question becomes, “Could I survive this?” It’s this question that drives the popularity of these films. Could you float around in the middle of the ocean with sharks circling you day and night? Could you make it on your own on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean? These questions go on and on as you browse through some of the popular survival movies that are out there. Infinite Storm has a few redeeming qualities, but it mostly plays itself out to be more of the same within this subgenre. 

Naomi Watts stars as Pam Bales, the real life survivalist who this story is based on. When she comes across a stranded stranger (Billy Howle) in the middle of a blizzard, she is determined to get them both down the mountain to safety. The stranger, who she decides to name John, is pretty bizarre to say the least. Not only is he out there in shorts and sneakers, but his state of mind is extremely unstable. In fact, Pam asks him pretty early on if he’s on drugs. As it turns out, the mystery of John is what really held my attention all the way to the end. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve seen this type of survival story before. The heavy snow. The unforgiving cold. The rough terrain of the mountains. Plenty of movies have covered these things before. At least John’s mystery mixed things up a little bit. 

The film being based on a true story gives it some extra emotional weight that it likely wouldn’t have if this was pure fiction. There’s a backstory with Pam that is completely devastating. As you can probably guess, John’s story has some layers to it as well. Again, it’s these pieces of the story that turned out to be the most intriguing elements. That’s not to take away from anything Pam accomplished on her rescue mission. Her heroic actions were extraordinary. However, I couldn’t help but feel like I’ve seen this story play out on screen so many times before. Even if it’s not on a mountain in the middle of a blizzard, the survival movie itself has a formula to it that just doesn’t excite me as much as it used to.

Watts and Howle are both fine here in their roles. With Watts in the lead, I think I expected more out of the movie. Unfortunately, the script holds her and Howle back a bit. Something about the dialogue feels a bit off at times. Some of it’s a little cheesy, while some of it comes off as a bit unnatural. A good example of this is the way Watts’ character says the name John in almost every sentence. If you put a counter on every time she says John, it would probably be up somewhere over 100 times. It’s just a weird tick to the dialogue that becomes annoyingly noticeable pretty early on. 

Infinite Storm did just enough things right to keep me engaged, but not quite enough to have me going all in on it. At the end of the day, I’m not sure if this story was really worthy of the movie treatment. It’s not to say audiences won’t attach to the themes that are here. The fight of the human spirit. The way we grieve. Finding a way to move on in life after tragedy strikes. This movie might hit home for some people. For me, it felt like a pretty cool story you might see in the headlines for a few days, but not something that needed to be retold as a major motion picture.