What do you get when you mix a Wes Anderson film with a Jacques Tati movie? In theory, it sounds like a rather interesting combination. A world filled with eccentric characters, absurd situations, and humour that largely comes from the way people interact with one another. Unfortunately, The Storm (2026) is a film that mainly demonstrates how an interesting premise is no guarantee of a successful comedy.
This Swedish comedy, originally titled Stormen, attempts to entertain audiences with a collection of peculiar characters who gradually lose control of their behaviour during a stormy evening. The result is a film that constantly tries to be funny and absurd, but rarely manages to pull it off.
Although The Storm looks polished and is clearly a professionally made production, the film lacks interesting characters, sharp dialogue, and genuinely entertaining situations. It doesn't take particularly long before the humour starts to wear thin.
The Storm Has an Interesting but Hardly Original Premise
In The Storm, a group of old friends and acquaintances gather to celebrate Filip's 45th birthday. He and his wife Caroline have chosen a beautiful estate in northern Sweden for the occasion. What was supposed to be a pleasant evening gradually turns into a chaotic affair when a violent storm cuts the group off from the outside world.
As the evening progresses, underlying frustrations, secrets, and personal problems increasingly come to the surface. The various characters begin behaving more and more strangely, and the situation slowly but surely spirals out of control.
On paper, the premise offers plenty of opportunities for an entertaining comedy. After all, a group of people forced to spend time together while their relationships gradually deteriorate can produce some genuinely funny situations.
The film opts for an absurdist approach, with characters, dialogue, and events becoming increasingly outrageous. Unfortunately, The Storm simply doesn't have enough good ideas to keep this approach interesting throughout its runtime.
The Absurdist Humour Doesn't Always Work
One of the first things you notice about The Storm is the way it approaches its humour. There is something about the visual presentation and the way certain scenes are constructed that brings Wes Anderson's work to mind. At the same time, some elements also evoke memories of Jacques Tati's physical and absurdist comedy.
It sounds like a particularly interesting combination, but unfortunately, The Storm has considerably fewer good ideas than you might expect based on that comparison.
The film is filled with absurd characters, strange dialogue, and situations in which things gradually go from bad to worse. This kind of humour can work extremely well when the characters are interesting enough and the situations escalate in a natural and entertaining way.
Unfortunately, that is not consistently the case here.
The characters simply aren't likeable enough, the dialogue isn't sharp enough, and the situations that unfold are too often neither particularly entertaining nor funny. The film regularly expects you to laugh at the way its characters behave, without providing an actual comedic reason to do so.
As a result, it becomes difficult to get on board with the humour. Instead of being curious about what will go wrong next, you increasingly find yourself wondering when the film will finally come up with something genuinely funny.
Too Many Characters and Not Enough Character Development
Another problem with The Storm is the sheer number of characters the film tries to introduce. Quite simply, there are too many different people involved in the events.
As a result, almost nobody gets enough time to become genuinely interesting. The film introduces all sorts of eccentric personalities but does very little to develop them beyond their initial characteristics.
Consequently, most of the characters remain little more than exaggerated caricatures. They all have their own strange traits, quirks, and personal problems, but that is largely where their characterisation ends.
This is a shame, because a comedy like this needs characters the audience can actually connect with. When you understand who these people are and why they react in certain ways, even relatively simple situations can become genuinely funny.
Unfortunately, The Storm too often lacks that foundation. There are so many characters that there is barely any room left to properly develop any of them. As a result, many of their actions and reactions feel more like random attempts to create a comedic situation than believable behaviour from recognisable people.
The Characters Frequently Behave in Completely Unbelievable Ways
Another issue is that the film regularly tries to generate humour from the increasingly bizarre behaviour of its characters. Of course, that can work perfectly well in an absurdist comedy, but the film needs to be convincing in the way it builds up these situations.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen here.
Far too often, it simply makes no sense why certain characters suddenly lose control or start behaving particularly strangely. The film seems to assume that an exaggerated reaction is automatically funny, which is obviously not necessarily the case.
Perhaps this approach would have worked better in a comedy that fully embraced an exaggerated and absurd style. In that case, the audience would know from the beginning that the events shouldn't be taken too seriously.
However, The Storm also tries to draw humour from a certain degree of realism. It wants you to recognise the relationships and personal frustrations of its characters, but at the same time, so many unbelievable things happen that it becomes increasingly difficult to take the events seriously.
This combination doesn't work particularly well. The film constantly finds itself somewhere between two different comedic approaches and never quite manages to establish a convincing tone of its own.
The Storm Becomes Rather Tiresome After Just an Hour
Perhaps the biggest problem with The Storm is that it stretches its ideas far beyond their limits.
Initially, there is at least some curiosity about the various characters and how the evening will unfold. You hope that the increasingly chaotic events will eventually lead somewhere and that the different storylines will come together in an interesting way.
Unfortunately, that feeling doesn't last particularly long.
After approximately an hour, the film has pretty much run out of steam. By that point, it has already exhausted a considerable number of its comedic possibilities, but offers very little in the way of fresh ideas to keep the audience interested.
Furthermore, several of the storylines don't seem to be going anywhere in particular. The characters continue behaving strangely, situations continue escalating, and the film keeps introducing new moments that are supposedly meant to be funny.
The problem is that the humour has become increasingly ineffective. When a film constantly tries to be absurd, it needs enough variation and creativity to keep things interesting. Otherwise, it quickly becomes exhausting.
And that is exactly what happens here. It becomes increasingly difficult to actually enjoy the events unfolding on screen.
The Storm at Least Looks Good
Fortunately, not everything about The Storm is disappointing. One aspect the film deserves credit for is its visual presentation.
The film looks polished and clearly has a professional appearance. The locations are beautifully chosen, and the way certain scenes are framed demonstrates that considerable attention has gone into the production.
Nothing about the presentation feels particularly amateurish. On the contrary, The Storm looks like a film that has received plenty of work and attention.
It's just a shame that the screenplay doesn't reach the same level. A polished presentation and an interesting visual approach cannot compensate for the fact that a film ultimately depends on the quality of its characters, dialogue, and humour.
And those are precisely the areas where The Storm falls short.
Final Verdict: The Storm Is a Tiresome Comedy With Too Few Good Ideas
The Storm is a film with a premise that offers plenty of opportunities for an entertaining absurdist comedy. The combination of eccentric characters, underlying frustrations, and increasingly chaotic events could have resulted in something genuinely enjoyable.
Unfortunately, the film ultimately does far too little with that potential.
The characters are insufficiently developed, the dialogue lacks the necessary sharpness, and many of the comedic situations simply aren't funny enough. The large number of characters means that almost nobody gets enough room to develop, while the increasingly absurd events eventually become more exhausting than entertaining.
It doesn't help that the various storylines seem to lack any real direction. After approximately an hour, you've pretty much had enough, and it becomes increasingly difficult to remain interested in what is happening.
Fortunately, the film looks visually polished and is clearly a professional production. However, that isn't enough to compensate for the many shortcomings of the screenplay.
Ultimately, The Storm is a missed opportunity. The idea of combining the absurdist humour of Jacques Tati with the eccentric characters and visual approach of Wes Anderson sounds appealing, but the execution leaves quite a bit to be desired.
It's not a particularly terrible film to watch, but don't expect to find yourself laughing very often.
Rating: 5/10
