'Into the Storm': Stock character-nado

"INTO THE STORM" is a "Sharknado" movie with a troubling lack of sharks.

But there is a whale of sorts - an EF5 (big) tornado pursued o'er the amber waves by the Ahabian storm chaser (Matt Walsh), whose obsessive zeal to find and film a gigantic tornado endangers his overworked and fearful crew.

They track a super cell to a town in Oklahoma where a high school principal (right-sized Richard Armitage, from the "Hobbit" movies) watches nervously as clouds approach a packed graduation service. One son is filming, another is off shooting a video project and dangerously exposed to the impending storm.

After 45 minutes of dull and dutiful backstory, the movie shifts into a "Twister" gear, and we get biblical multifunnel-cloud storms, culminating with The Big One, which wreaks havoc on Oklahoma but resolves all plot lines with admirable neatness.

The movie is completely predictable - preview audiences vocally anticipated the fates of the two YouTube yahoos who selfie'd themselves in the face of the storm.

But the effects are decent - one guy gets sucked up into a fire-nado, a horrible tragedy the audience absolutely loved - and it's hard to hold a grudge against a competent action movie that runs less than 90 minutes.

Still, would it have killed "Storm" to toss in one flying shark, or one Botox-embalmed exile from Melrose Place?