Things are never going to turn out well for someone who decides to go mountain climbing in a movie called Infinite Storm. That doesn't stop Pam Bales (Naomi Watts), a search-and-rescue volunteer in New Hampshire's Mount Washington State Park, from heading out into ominous weather on a November day that marks the anniversary of some tragic event from her past. Pam is a real person, and Infinite Storm is based on true events, but the movie holds back on revealing anything about Pam's backstory until close to the end, making her a largely inscrutable character, despite Watts' best efforts.
At first, Pam is alone on the mountain, free to exorcise whatever personal demons she's dealing with. As the clouds gather, the wind picks up, and the snow starts falling, Infinite Storm begins to look like a solo survivalist drama, especially when Pam falls down a hole and spends the next several scenes attempting to escape. But once she makes it out of that hole, she comes across a man who appears nearly dead, stranded in the snow while dressed like he's spending a sunny day in the park. The man is barely coherent and possibly intoxicated, and she decides to call him John as she talks him through her rescue efforts, warming him up and guiding him onto the path back down the mountain.
John (Billy Howle) thwarts her at every turn, casting off the clothes she puts on him and veering off-course, seemingly determined not to survive. The movie becomes a tedious, repetitive struggle between this almost absurdly selfless rescue worker and a man who does not want to be rescued. Most of the dialogue consists of Pam yelling John's name over and over, as he stumbles around like a toddler. Instead of harrowing, it's almost comical, which undermines the sense of danger for both characters. When Pam admonishes John not to fall into a river as he's slowly inching across a log, what happens next comes across more like a punchline than a disaster.
Occasional gauzy flashbacks to Pam playing with her two young daughters hint at the trauma she's processing, but it's not until the third act that director Malgorzata Szumowska and screenwriter Josh Rollins explore Pam's motivations, or how they connect to John's equally vague background. By that time, the central crisis has passed (the infinitude of the storm is, of course, metaphorical), and the revelations feel anticlimactic, a way to add thematic weight to a relatively simple, straightforward series of true events.
Polish director Szumowska has worked mostly in small-scale, character-driven dramas, and her staging of the most intense action in Infinite Storm lacks the excitement and urgency of more successful survival thrillers. Although set in New Hampshire, the movie was shot in the more budget-friendly mountains of Slovenia, and cinematographer Michael Englert (who also receives a separate co-director credit) captures some imposing images of nature. The vast establishing shots provide a sense of scale for what Pam and John are facing, but when the focus shifts to the characters themselves, the action is typically limited and confusing. Despite the frequent onscreen time stamps, it's often unclear how far the characters have gone or how much distance they have left to cover in order to reach safety.
The real-life Pam Bales is an inspirational figure, and it's no surprise that her story went viral when it was first reported. But Infinite Storm fails to translate that story into compelling drama, stretching material better suited for a short documentary into a tiresome, treacly narrative feature film. ♦
INFINITE STORM
Rated R
Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska
Starring Naomi Watts, Billy Howle, Denis O'Hare
