Super Storm (Blu-ray)

SyFy Channel original movie Super Storm, originally titled Mega Cyclone, doesn’t have airborne sharks, alas. But it does deliver an appropriate level of tongue-in-cheek mayhem.

Penned by Ice Quake writer David Ray and helmed by Snowmageddon director Sheldon Wilson, this willfully straightforward and occasionally schlocky FX spectacle isn’t aiming for Academy Awards. But it comes up with a halfway decent hybrid framing device for its silly chaos and destruction, making it a sort of matinee-throwback B-feature to more gargantuan Hollywood enviro-disaster flicks like Dante’s Peak or The Day After Tomorrow.

Its story, set in the small town Midwest, centers around Will (Brett Dier), the stereotypically disaffected son of divorced Jason (Richard Sutcliffe) and Andrea Newmar (Leah Cairns), the latter of whom is the town’s sheriff. When the giant red spot on the planet Jupiter triggers a spate of electrical storms, cyclones and tornados across the United States, Will and his high school detention mates — Megan (Luisa D’Oliveira), Susan (Cindy Busby) and Lawson (Riley Dolman) — team up with Gunter (Mitch Pileggi) and Carolyn (Erica Cerra) to try to unlock and utilize the lessons of a special science project in order to turn the tide on Mother Nature’s unleashed carnarge. The CGI work here is shaky, and some of the wisecracking kind of ridiculous, but the youth-oriented spin on genre formula actually works decently, delivering a kitschy slice of throwaway entertainment suitable for the tween set.

Housed in a regular case, Super Storm comes to Blu-ray presented in 1080p, in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with a suitably robust Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track (kind of what one might expect/hope for from a movie called Super Storm) and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Unfortunately, apart from chapter stops, there are no supplemental bonus features herein, not even EPK-style on-set interviews. Nevertheless, to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click hereC (Movie) C- (Disc)