User Reviews

The lawyer Rob (Robert Taylor) and his French wife Pia (Nadia Farès) rent a small motor boat to spend the day fishing at the sea. In the end of the day, Rob decides to steer the boat through marsh islands but they become lost and stranded while a storm is coming.

Rob decides to walk with Pia to find a shelter and they reach a dilapidated house with no one home. Rob also finds a decrepit greenhouse with a plantation of marijuana. Out of the blue, three rednecks arrive in the place and the abusive and deranged brothers Jimmy (David Lyons) and Brett (Mathew Wilkinson) point shotguns to them and torture Rob and Pia while their father "Poppy" (John Brumpton) goes to his room to rest. The couple soon realizes that Pia will be raped by the sadistic and they will be killed after and they decide to fight back.

"Storm Warning" is a brutal and gore slasher with an unoriginal storyline that surprisingly works well, supported by great direction and performances and excellent cinematography, special effects and camera work. The decision of Pia, when she learns that she will be raped by the rednecks, is the best moment of this highly recommended film. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Aviso de Tempestade" ("Storm Warning")

I must say that I really thought I was going to be disappointed with this movie but I was pleasantly surprised. The plot itself was pretty standard - innocent people stumble across a hilly-billy house and trouble follows. Familiar plot aside, I have to admit that this was a great survival flick and once it got started, the gore was never-ending. The death scenes are pretty realistic and creative. I cringed and I don't often do that. Once the real fighting starts, I couldn't help but to root for the victims and almost feel sorry for the bad guys. It is savage and unrelenting. The acting was pretty decent by all involved and the mood was always dark and sadistic. I could watch this over and over! Definitely worth a watch and although it is not on the same level as movies like Wrong Turn and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, if you enjoyed those films, this movie should definitely satisfy your hunger for horror!

Carrying a tagline such as "From The Director of 'Urban Legend' and 'Valentine'" may not be the best way to sell a film, but it at least had me intrigued. While I may have initially over-looked "Storm Warning," thinking it was yet another joy-less, modern-day horror film where people get tortured in ultra-violent ways and scream until its unpleasant conclusion (think "Hostel" and the like), it was the name of Jamie Blanks who caught my attention. While "Urban Legend" and "Valentine" are about as sterilized as American horror can get, the Australian director has a strong visual sense that helped elevate both films, and thinking he could save yet another film from being "just another," I figured "Storm Warning" would be a safe bet. Thankfully, I was right.

When a well-to-do couple gets stranded during a quaint fishing trip, they seek shelter in the home of three psychopaths who quickly put The Mr. out of commission and make sexual advances towards The Mrs. every five minutes. The film unravels as a typical, nihilistic piece, until somewhere in the second act when the captors fight back. Soon, the villains find themselves at the mercy of well-placed traps ("Hellraiser," anyone?) and some make-shift birth control. While it plays itself off as yet another "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"-type film, "Storm Warning" is meaner and just plain more fun than most of what this sub-genre has to offer. Throughout the third act, I found myself jumping in excitement as I cheered along Nadia Fares' character and cringed at some of the excruciating and often over-the-top bloodshed. Blanks handles all of this with substantial atmosphere and slick style. Once you get past the cheap looking -- we're talking "Open Water" cheap -- first act, "Storm Warning" submerses you in the dark and dirty, without flinching once. It also helps with two solid leads on hand. Nadia Fares is both stunning and strong as the unlikely female lead, while Robert Taylor keeps it real as the frightened and vulnerable husband. The sickos are a bit over-the-top but suitable, and you're bound to cheer for their demise. Overall, "Storm Warning" doesn't bring much new to the genre, but it's got more than it's fair share of thrills and unique death scenes. If one thing is for certain, it will get a reaction from most anyone, and is worth at least a rental.

Refreshing opening scenes added depth and setting for the terror to come, Storm Warning felt well acted and had some nicely balanced moments where the air was tense. At no time did it seem that anyone was out of character or over the top, in fact it was a little bit of the opposite where you felt the villains were being played down slightly on their own turf. The gore aspect was well dressed and distributed, definitely worth the wait with more than one eyebrow raising moment, one of which was totally original at the time of production. To conclude, unlike many other horror films, this film has a plot with a backbone which remains unbroken, there's gore and then there's gore with meaning.

"From the director of Valentine and Urban Legend …" the rental DVD cover exclaims loud and proud, but I'm not entirely sure if this is the best way to promote your film to true horror fans. Even more so, if I were in directors Jamie Blanks' shoes, I would insist to have those two titles removed as it might even cause people to relinquish from seeing "Storm Warning" altogether. Both "Valentine" and "Urban Legend" are mundane, unmemorable and politically correct American teen slashers, whereas "Storm Warning" is a provocatively raw and unhinged piece of Aussie survival horror. Albeit a fairly prototypic product of nowadays hypes and trends (like torture porn flicks and the revival of Grindhouse-type movie), "Storm Warning" plays in an entirely different – and superior – league than those infantile teen slashers. It almost feels as if Jamie Blanks returned to his home country Australia and finally got offered the chance to make a legit horror movie after all that confined and disappointing Hollywood crap. But, as indicated already, originality isn't exactly this film's biggest trump. We're overflowed with this sort of horror films nowadays (just think of "Hostel", "Scar", "Wolf Creek", "Blood Trails"…) and, since they pretty much all feature the same plot outline, the final judgement of whether it's "good" or "bad" almost fully relies on how gory, shocking and sadistic the film is. Fans of rough and nasty can be reassured; "Storm Warning" reaches an extremely high score on the repulsiveness-scale! The film takes off slow and moodily unsettling, but in the last twenty or so minutes all hell breaks loose and we're treated to a handful outrageously engrossing and surprisingly ingenious torture sequences. A young couple making a sailboat day trip lose their sense of direction and can't return to the harbor because of a suddenly uprising storm. They strand on a remote island and seek shelter in a seemingly abandoned farmhouse. Then, of course, the farmers return and turn out to be two menacing, perverted and psychopathic brothers …. And then the couple hasn't even met their "poppy" yet. The first hour of this short but effective little Aussie shocker is slow but nevertheless suspenseful. Director Blanks clearly adores long pan shots of the ocean and the darkening clouds, but somehow these images set the exact right tone for the events to come. Later on, "Storm Warning" is truly hardcore-to-the-bone, with the French girl suddenly transforming into a do-it-yourself avenging angel! There's also a rather uncomfortable moment involving a cute wallaby and – hands down – the most agonizing penis moment since that infamous scene in "I Spit on your Grave". Nadia Farès is a ravishing lady to look at and particularly the three native Aussie freaks (David Lyons, Mathew Wilkinson and John Brumpton as Poppy) are marvelously convincing.

Yuppies have a lot of trouble driving pickups. Hillbillies detest Volvo's. Yuppie women who are squeamish about fishing somehow can figure out how to turn fishing rods into booby-traps. Obviously yuppie women also know that hillbillies skip foreplay completely. In "Storm Warning", the yuppies and hillbillies have one thing in common, and that is no common sense. Prepare to be amazed by a plot that relies on the yuppies purposely steering their small boat into a mangrove swamp, with a storm approaching, get lost, and seek shelter in a house that is obviously occupied by degenerate locals (you can't help but notice the blowup doll in the living room). The hillbillies, who can barely write their names in the mud with a stick, might elicit some sympathy after all. - MERK

"Storm Warning" is a tedious waste of time, even for hardcore horror fans.

The only cool gore scene happens with such a ridiculous set up that you may be too distracted to enjoy it, but anyway, why sit through an hour and twenty minutes of boring garbage just to get to the one scene when it's surely available as an animated gif?

The set up is the usual garbage about two yuppies who get lost, find themselves in a ramshackle old house and let themselves in. The house belongs to some moronic rednecks who aren't too happy at having their privacy invaded.

We've seen this all before, so why do we need the endless scenes where the yuppies are menaced by the rednecks? I don't mean tortured or physically harmed, I mean just simply scared by their off-colour dialogue and unstable behaviour. These characters aren't scary. They're annoying. Their behaviour isn't frightening, it's irritating.

The cool gore scene I described earlier involves the yuppie woman suddenly becoming McGuyver and setting a ridiculous trap that couldn't possibly work even if she were someone with some degree of technical expertise, rather than a yuppie artist from the city.

The payoff, indeed, is something to see.

Google it.

This is a very effective low budget offering from the Southern hemisphere.

The plot is pretty simple, revolving around a yuppie couple who stumble upon a backwoods family who take them prisoner. What elevates this film above similar tales is the sheer sense of menace and relentless vulnerability that is created, and also the sheer energy and inventiveness with which the captors are depicted.

Personally, I felt very uncomfortable throughout and I empathised with the couple who had somehow got themselves into so much trouble. The woman, who to make matters worse is French, is under constant threat of rape. I felt particularly sorry for her lawyer boyfriend who is helplessly out of his depth and fully aware that he is unable to defend her.

However, she is made of pretty stern stuff and when her boyfriend is incapacitated by the savage yokels they have encountered she takes matters into her own hands and begins the fight back.

This protracted turning of the tables takes up the final third of the film and is handled with great energy and and enthusiasm. Some old-school booby traps are employed against one of the villains whilst she has another trick up her, ahem, sleeve which really has to be seen to be believed.

Without giving too much away, I found the eventual structure of this film quite fascinating and original, but for the casual viewer alike this film really delivers. There is plenty of atmosphere, humour, set-piece carnage and thrills for everyone and the hyped up soundtrack keeps things moving along nicely.

And not just pain down under - although I guess that's where it comes from. Puns aside, this Australian movie never made it to Germany uncut. Still the fact that the movie is violent made the ratings board declare this a despicable work of art. Although I'm not sure they even consider it art.

But their prejudices aside, yes this is a very violent movie. And yes you should not be squeamish at all. Still the story is nicely told and you can relate to the main characters. The good ones that is. The mean and bad characters may seem unreasonable (they are), but it's not like we are not aware that this is a movie overall. Decent horror movie for hardcore fans

After reading comments from various users I thought this movie would be worth watching. It turned out the opposite. According to me a horror flick should scare you but in this case it does not. It just contains more gore and nothing more. Except the soundtrack there is nothing in the movie which is worth talking about. The story is a bit stretched with dull scenes present from time to time. The basic plot is about a couple who gets stuck in a secluded place near the shore. Here they meet three guys who are kinda barbarians and thus they get into trouble.

Absolutely disappointed to be honest.

A Couple Rob & Pia goes out on a boat trip.Bad weather and a big storm coming.They goes to an isolated house on an island to look after help.If I say so its not friendly people living there.A father and his two sons and they are very mean and cruel to say the least and have no plans to let the visitors leave alive.This movie is made by Jamie Blanks the director of two other horror films Urban Legend & Valentine.I think Storm Warning is far better horror film that do have some scary moments and shocking violence.Good acting overall with top performance by Nadia Fares as Pia.The contrast between its raining all time&the isolated creepy house surrounded by woods and the nuts family living there is a good build up for a horror film.Gore & Violence is well made.Music soundtrack do a good work and fits mostly the film fine.This film is filmed in Blanks home country Australia.Its not a masterpiece but a good entertaining Horror film and I recommend it for sure.I give it 7/10

As an Aussie this is one my fav's from home. Gore fiends will be well satisfied, the story may be familiar but full credit for making this a standout with creativity and despicable bad guys. Well worth a watch!

Totally unoriginal but reasonably "enjoyable" survival horror from Australia about a couple who get lost whilst fishing and run into some very clichéd inbred backwood red necks, I suspect attempting to cash in on the superficially similar recent successes such as Wolf Creek, Wrong Turn and The Hills Have Eyes.

Any tension, threat or menace is completely destroyed by the over the top pantomime performances of the villains and the obvious studio setting used for most of the film. There is never any sense that the protagonists are in real danger nor any empathy for them, in fact I wanted to see things happen to Robert Taylor to rouse him from his comatose performance which seemed to be induced by medication.

There are however some very "satisfying" gore scenes towards the end as "vengeance" is meted out but it does seem wholly disproportionate to the ordeal of the couple, perhaps they were angered at being upstaged by three members of the local amateur dramatics society.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is an original take on the ultra realistic inbred red neck slasher survival horror sub genre, after all it is from the director of the equally unoriginal Urban Legend.

A couple (Nadia Fares and Robert Taylor) go out in a boat for a bit of fishing. All is well until they take a detour down an obscure channel, winding up lost in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Instead of turning around, they press on until their boat won't go any further. In addition, there's a big storm approaching.

Happening upon a dilapidated house, they find it empty, but soon discover that it's occupied by a psychopathic dad and his two demonic sons. What could possibly go wrong?

STORM WARNING is a grisly survival / revenge film with likable heroes and reprehensible villains. While pretty basic, there are enough twists and novel situations to keep it interesting. Ms. Fares' character turns out to be more than we might -at first- think. She's smart, and willing to do what she must to stay alive. One scene in particular will have viewers cheering and wincing simultaneously!...

Rob (Robert Taylor), an Australian barrister, and Pia (Nadia Fares), his smoking hot French wife, go on a boating and fishing excursion. They run into some rough weather, and after making it to land (they're now on French Island), finally find some shelter in the form of a remote shack. Little do they know how much trouble they've just bought themselves: the shack is home to lunatic marijuana growers. Jimmy (David Lyons) and Brett (Mathew Wilkinson) are the dutiful sons, Poppy (John Brumpton) is the sleazy dad. (This lovely family unit also has a bloodthirsty dog named Honky.) They proceed to mock and terrorize Rob and Pia until she finally decides that she's had enough and proceeds to fight back.

There's nothing here that's really original - even the device of having Pia being the stronger one in this married couple - but director / composer / co-editor Jamie Blanks gives this extremely visceral and rousing movie the kind of visual punch that it needs. The atmosphere is excellent, as the wind and rain machines work overtime. The many shots of Australia's countryside are breathtaking. Although things start out rather slowly, the scenario eventually gets pumped full of blood and gore.

The charismatic, creepy Lyons and Wilkinson are superb as the uncivilized hicks, and Brumpton is just chilling as dear old dad. The sexy Fares becomes quite appealing when she shifts into ass kicking mode. Her Rube Goldberg type device of dispatching one of the brothers is priceless. Clearly they underestimate her right from the start! They treat her and Rob with contempt, addressing her as "Oui Oui" and him as "Volvo" (after he's told them what kind of car he drives).

Slick, fast paced (once it kicks into gear), and rousing, "Storm Warning" is fine entertainment of its type. And it ends in very matter of fact style, not bothering with an epilogue. For the most part, it's not exactly memorable, but it shows the viewer a good time and wraps up in a trim 86 minutes.

Seven out of 10.

Before WWIII erupts: THE FOLLOWING IS MY OPINION.. Nothing more than that.

In an age where movies feature zero character development, a very thin plot, and a kill every three minutes.. I was pleasantly surprised to find Storm Warning a more traditional and fun movie to watch.

I have heard the comparisons:

"Another Wolf Creek" - WRONG. This film has a much more rich plot than Wolf Creek, and has a completely different flow and style.

"Another Texas Chainsaw Rip Off" - UNFAIR STATEMENT. This film is NOTHING like TCM. The backwoods loonies are not half-retarded inbred yokels, rather some sadistic fellows who have been in the brush for a bit too long.

"Boring" - Compared to what? This film is constantly moving..

Granted, we've all seen the "innocent couple / group of people lost in the woods" set up before. True enough.. HOWEVER, the plot specifics are original (by today's standards) and the writing is superb. The lighting and cinematography are exceptional, and the acting and direction of the film are tip-top.. Especially given the admitted low budget.

I think that modern horror fans who are used to a kill every three minutes will hate this film due to the lack of gratuitous splatter. However the kills that are featured are ALL brutal and unique. I'd prefer a movie with some good build up and powerful turns over a film that is just mindless gore any day.. To see the same people who praised the Friday the 13th remake bashing this film is laughable.. So in detail, here is my assessment:

The Plot: We've seen it before.. City folk trying to fight off crazed hillbillies. Nothing new here. However, the specifics of the story, the characters, and the build-up are very realistic and human... not formulaic and tired. I had no trouble staying locked into the story.. and despite a hint of predictability, the film delivers.. I love the fact that had the city-folk not tampered with the house (nor the shed) that it's implied they might have been left alone.

The Writing: This story moves, and the dialog is very well-crafted. Everett De Roche did a phenomenal job making the story-line believable and realistic.

The Acting: The actors all deliver. Period. No weak links in my opinion. I have heard people talk trash about both Nadia Farès and Robert Taylor's performance.. especially the latter. However, given the types of people they are supposed to be, the delivery comes off as very real and true to form. Personally, I think that they both gave strong performances, and stayed true to the nature of their characters. Also, I must say that David Lyons won me over as an actor. That guy steals the show, and his performance alone is worth watching the film. I haven't seen an actor with that much physical command in a while, and his performance was a pleasant surprise.

The Cinematography: This film was beyond "well shot", especially with budget constraints.. I was highly impressed with the movement and the camera angles.. Very smooth and very bold. I did notice a couple repeat shots.. one of which is used both backwards and forwards within a couple minutes of one-another.. but it doesn't take away from how wonderfully filmed this movie is.

The Directing: Personally, I think this is Jamie Blanks' best work to date (that I have seen), and I will be keeping an eye out for future films by this very talented director. Personally, I enjoyed this film way more than the (more modern and trendy-styled) Urban Legend. I must also commend the tasteful use of CGI. I am so sick of computer-based shots that insult my intelligence.. and the use of CGI in this film (while present) is very tastefully done.

For the older, more old school horror fans, this film is a breath of fresh air. I am extremely picky about horror films.. Even a bit snobby. I am not easily impressed, and this film is impressive. It is rare to find a modestly budgeted film that has solid writing, directing, acting, and flow... and Storm Warning delivers.. This film is anything but "another Wolf Creek", and it is surely no TCM.. Although, I did enjoy the nod to TCM when Poppy meets the hidden bottle. The sound effect was an eerie reminder of the original TCM. Beyond that, this film stands in a class of it's own. Nicely done.

Loved this movie. Was not sure what to expect, but after reading some of the reviews decided to watch it. I love a good thriller, and this one did not disappoint, in fact it was better than I expected. The suspense was very good, and in fact stopped the movie a couple of times because I needed to take a breath. Scenery was very good, acting was good, and plot was good.

If I had to have any negative things to say it would be that I found it difficult at times to understand what they were saying. They do speak English but being an American it at times was hard and had to rewind it to figure out what was said/meant.