Nailbiter (2012)

(aka I'd Rather Fight the Twister)
Release Date: Festival Circuit now; DVD/VOD soon.
Country: USA
Written by: Patrick Rea and Kendal Sinn.
Directed by: Patrick Rea.
Starring: Meg Saricks and Erin McGrane.

At first, we expected Nailbiter to be a cheap version of the 1996 Holy Grail of Tornado movies, Twister. Then we thought that it might be about a bunch of people running from a Haunted Tornado that was hungry for vengeance. Then, we thought it might be a ripoff of Burning Bright, and maybe it would trap a family in a mobile home with a rabid badger or something, with a massive F5 Tornado bearing down on them.

When we finally saw Nailbiter, we were all like "Well, I certainly didn't expect that."

Tornadoes are scary business. The last few years alone have seen cities and states devastated by them, so any portrayal of them on film is bound to be a tension-filled experience, especially for Midwestern Americans... and so a movie involving a threatening twister certainly earns a watch from us...

Nailbiter starts off with a Mom and her girls on their way to meet Dad at the airport. He's been on deployment you see, so they are all eager to have him home again. Mom, being the alcoholic mess that she is, ignores the Tornado Warnings that talk of nasty weather hitting the area, because they need to be at the airport so that they can be the first faces that he sees after seeing so much war.

Watch the road, woman!

It's not long before they are forced off of the road by a massive Twister that is almost on top of them, and they take shelter in the storm cellar of an old abandoned farmhouse... or is it? Abandoned, I mean. It's not, and that's what I'm saying. What am I saying?

She is not very neighborly.

Oh... what I was saying was, they break into this storm cellar, which is never the best idea when out in rural country, to wait out the storm. If it comes down to facing a massive Tornado or buying someone a new lock and apologizing profusely for trespassing on their land and breaking into their home... I'd make the same call. Unfortunately for them though, they pick the wrong cellar to take shelter in.

Why aren't those people scared of that that tornado too?

Nailbiter was a surprisingly good little movie, that took us places that we didn't expect it to. Is it about a killer Tornado, or is it about some creepy shit in a cellar? Yes. No matter what the plot is truly about, Nailbiter delivers some pretty tension-filled scenes and some awesome shots. One thing we really loved about this movie is the way that it ends; it really makes us curious to see a sequel.

The sequel might just be called "Bulletbiter."

For a while there, this movie felt like a Syfy original. The acting isn't very good for the most part, and up until they take shelter from the oncoming storm, it all felt like a low budget melodrama. Once it switched gears though, and the story began to pick up a bit of steam, all of that was forgotten. Still, it was a bit of a mixed bag early on.

Don't sit down, I just told them you were picking up steam...

This movie needed more Tornado! Alright, it didn't need more hot Tornado action, but we really would have loved some. We're just suckers for Tornado visuals, whether real or not. Honestly, Tornado footage kind of hypnotizes us, makes our butts pucker, we end up drooling all over ourselves, and we don't even realize we're crying until the it's all over with. We have issues. Maybe a Tornado touched us when we were kids. Don't judge.

Pants would be shat.

A surprising little flick, Nailbiter does a fairly good job of living up to its name.It starts off as one type of film, then twists and turns into another altogether, which keeps things interesting. We'd love to see Patrick Rea follow this one up with a sequel, because let's be honest, we have no clue what happened at the end of this movie. If you're down for a fun little movie that rides the C+/B- border, then check it when it hits DVD and VOD.

P.S. Patrick Rea, if there is a part 2, there had better be double the tornadoes!

C+

Meg Saricks is in this. We hope that she will be in other things too, and soon.