Danny’s life is just about to change for the worst, if that were possible, given his life already consists of being a slacker journalist who drinks too much and eats cold pizza. But worse it most definitely get when his life of endless clubbing is interrupted Lova who hands him a plain looking box and, like Pandora, Danny discovers that not all thing within boxes are presents. Soon he is being hunted by strange assassins bent on retrieving the box at any cost, anyone who gets in their way is killed and soon Danny realises that the police are after him for the murders. With nowhere left to run Danny returns home...

Storm (2005), directed by Mans Marland and Bjorn Stein, is a Swedish science fiction action thriller, the film won the directors an award at the Stockholm Film Festival as well as a Guldbagge award for best cinematography. Think of Donnie Darko meets The Matrix, or any other film that mixes fantasy and reality, and you’ll get a flavour of Storm. Like the aforementioned films Storm tries hard to use a mix of hip visual styles, not only to add to its cult status, but also to enthral the audience whilst at the same time keeping them off balance.

This also extends to mixing Danny’s internal world visually with his external persona. Now, if you like being taken on this sort of ride, then you’re going to love Storm - if not then you’re going to be very lost very quickly. The cultural and sub-cultural references are liberally peppered throughout the movie, making this a geek’s paradise. When Danny gets home things get freakier as space and time start to mix. So is it really happening or is it all in his head? Like many of these films, that try to mix reality, not many of them fully work and this is the case with Storm.

That’s not to say that the film isn’t any good, personally I like this type of movie that tries to do something out of the ordinary. Okay, so the ride isn’t as successful as it could have been, but that does not diminish the interest. The actors do a good job with their parts and the twists and turns never fail to delight.

It is difficult to say much about the quality of the picture as the check disc, and hopefully only the check disc, presents the film in what looks like its original cinematic aspect ratio, but the film only fills about the middle third of the screen. On top of that it has some of the worst, gaudiest yellow burned in subtitles that I have ever seen. These puppies are so big that  you get the feeling that the finished disc really will look like this. Lets hope not. The PR blurb says that the finished disc will have trailers and a photo gallery as extras but as they were not included I can’t comment.

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Charles Packer