Rising Storm (1989)

What even is this film? Genuinely, I finished watching Rising Storm and sat there for a moment just blinking at the screen. It's the kind of movie that makes you question your own judgement for having stuck with it, and yet somehow, you can't quite regret the decision either.

The setup is a dystopian near-future where society is fraying at the seams and youth gangs have taken over the streets. So far, so familiar. You can see the blueprints it's working from: a bit of Mad Max here, a splash of A Clockwork Orange there, all filtered through a grimy, sand-soaked B-movie sensibility. The problem is that borrowing from great films doesn't make you a great film. It just makes the gap between ambition and execution all the more obvious.

The plot, such as it is, concerns rebellion, government crackdowns on dissent, and the usual dystopian fare about control and chaos. But it's so thinly sketched and half-baked that it barely registers as a story. More of a series of scenes loosely pointed in the same direction and hoping for the best.

The acting is stiff throughout, the dialogue stilted in that particular way where you can tell everyone is trying very hard to be serious, which only makes things funnier. The costumes look like they were assembled from scrap metal offcuts and leftover punk gear from a charity shop. There's a committed grimness to the whole thing that's completely at odds with how ridiculous it all looks and sounds in practice. The tone lurches between grim prophecy and accidental farce without ever landing on either.

And then there's the scene. You'll know it when you get there. The "vibrator grenade" moment is so utterly bizarre, so completely out of nowhere, that it briefly transforms Rising Storm into something almost magnificent. It's the kind of choice that makes you wonder who was in that writers' room and what on earth they were thinking. It is, without question, the film's most memorable moment, possibly its only one, and it earns a genuine laugh rather than a polite one.

Credit where it's due: the synth-heavy score is oddly catchy. It has no right to be as enjoyable as it is given everything else going on around it. And the cinematography occasionally flashes some real style amid the grime, suggesting there might have been genuine talent somewhere in the production that never quite got the material it deserved. I'm reminded a little of Nightmare City, another low-budget genre effort that swings wildly between inspired and incompetent. At least that one had a certain manic energy keeping things moving. Rising Storm is messier, more incoherent, and far less sure of what it's doing.

The pacing drags badly in the second act. Scenes that should punch hard land with a dull thud. The narrative incoherence stops being charming and starts being genuinely tedious. For a film running under ninety minutes, it outstays its welcome more than once.

So here's where I land on it. Rising Storm is a mess, no question about it. Poorly paced, narratively all over the place, and far too committed to its own strangeness to clock how silly it's become. But it does have that trashy, almost accidental charm that certain forgotten oddities manage to acquire. If you're hunting for a cult curio, something genuinely weird that you can throw on with low expectations and a high tolerance for chaos, this forgotten little trainwreck might just scratch that itch. Go in expecting art and you'll be baffled. Go in expecting a strange night at the cinema and you might find something to enjoy.

Two stars. Odd and largely indefensible, but at least it gave me the vibrator grenade.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 1989  | Watched: 2025-07-27

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

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