Pyscho Storm Chaser

 

Psycho Storm Chaser (2021) - Lifetime

Hopefully this is the start of whole new genre of movies, that being the killer Reality TV Show Host!  while Bear Gryllis or the Property Brothers might not be killers... yet... they're not not killers either, as far as we know.  But the Storm Chaser Dr. Carl (Rib Hillis), oh yeah, this cat's a killer for real.  Dr. Carl is flat out of his mind, which we know already due to the lengthy history of super descriptive movie titles that the Lifetime network has been giving us since it's inception.  Dr. Carl is pyscho, he chases storms, what more do we need to know?

So Dr. Carl, who works alone, is covering some terrible storm in some poor town and he finds some poor girl who didn't evacuate.  Dr. Carl HATES people who don't evacuate.  Dr. Carl rants and raves at this woman for a few minutes, then completely murders her.

I don't know how many people Dr. Carl had killed before this poor girl, but from what we will see moving forward, she was probably the last in long line of murders for the man in this particular storm.  If Dr. Carl were real, it would be safe to assume that half the deaths in Hurricane Katrina were caused by the storm, with the other half caused by Dr. Carl.

Fresh off of killing this woman, Carl retreats to his Rape Van for some last minute editing of his latest episode and catches the news of the next coming storm, complete with a story featuring Home care worker Abby (Tara Erickson) who looks suspiciously like someone Dr. Carl used to know.  But more importantly it's looking like Abby isn't taking this storm seriously and we've already established that Dr. Carl doesn't like people who don't take storms seriously.

Now that Abby's been introduced we are forced to get bogged down in the mundane minutiae of her life, such as her recent break-up with her cop boyfriend Jack (Ivan Djurovic) which I could care less about, or her job taking care of coma patient Hannah under the severely uptight watch Hannah's oppressively pale (but hot) sister Ella (Mary O'Neil).  There's stuff going on here which is probably important to this movie, but we don't care about any of this nonsense and really need to get back to Dr. Carl. 

So Carl has arrived in town where a Category 3 Hurricane is descending upon them, and most of the towns residents have evacuated but a few haven't.  Did I mention that Carl really doesn't like people who don't evacuate?  Say like a young couple who decided to tough it out during the storm, drink wine and have hurricane sex.  Sadly, no happy endings today for these young folks.

So Carl bludgeons these two to death with the husband supplied baseball bat, and this where we find out that Carl is not only a psycho, but also an asshole as he informs the wife, that while she is certainly going to die, at least she cried less than her dead husband.   That was uncalled for Dr. Carl.

Meanwhile, Abby's concerned cop ex-boyfriend, who is making his way to his ex to make sure she's okay, even though she doesn't want him to, has a local cop dispatched to the house for a wellness check.  Abby doesn't like that either.  After this checkup, which ends with Mr. Cop getting verbally abused by the mean, pale sister, he notices an open front door, next door.  This would be the home of the recently murdered young husband and wife.  Being the top cop that he is, he goes to investigate.  What he finds is two dead people staged around a dinner table and he knows something is wrong.  Investigating further he finds Dr. Carl in the basement, who tells this cop that he walked in before he could finish staging his 'death by storm' scene, and while he has nothing but respect for first responders... oh well.

Got him with the old standing in a pool of water, dropping a live wire trick.  Get's them every time.

Finally Carl slides next door to get the business of murdering everybody in Abby's house, starting with 
Abby's co-worker Tony (Ali Zahiri).   Tony, who was outside refilling the generator, can take solace in that he did help Carl shoot a couple of scenes for his latest episode before being smashed in the skull with the camera he helped Carl shoot his show with.

Dr. Carl has now made his way into the house and meets the comatose sister.  

He apologizes for having to kill her, fully recognizing that she's in a coma and it's not like she voluntarily chose to stay behind, but those taking care of her should've had a plan.  This also where Carl starts getting a sloppy with his murder game, not finishing jobs which doesn't really look like Carl's style.

For instance, the ex-boyfriend made it to the house earlier and gets bashed in the head by Carl, but only knocked unconscious.  Then he runs into the bitchy pale sister and chokes her out... but not quite to death.

The ex-boyfriend, bleeding from the head shows back up and Carl tries again to kill him, this time using the rather ineffective murder device of a smores roaster.

So with everybody seemingly dead, that only leaves Carl to hunt down and finish Abby, but this is going to take a minute or two which leaves Carl room for EXPOSITION TIME!  

Abby, as it turns out, is the spitting image of Carl's dead wife.  Some years ago there was a storm, Carl called this wife of his and told her to evacuate, which she said she would do... but she did not.  Thus when Carl found this wife of his, she was dead at home, killed by the storm, in bed with his next door neighbor.  Clearly Dr. Carl did not handle this well.  Thus he's been going through the process of killing his whore of a dead wife and her lover over and over and over again.  Think of it as therapy, if therapy is totally not working.  Carl does tell Abby that he's not killing anybody, the storm is killing them, and he's the storm.  Carl is crazy.

Once Dr. Carl stops taking, it looks like he has Abby dead to rights, but the bitchy pale sister has regained consciousness and scares Dr. Carl by throwing a book at him.  I didn't think that would work, but it did.  The ladies try to hide, but Carl breaks down the door, grabs the bitchy sister and talks some more.  Dr. Carl is quite verbose.  What he didn't plan on was coma sister coming back to life suddenly and foiling his plans.

The mad reign of Dr. Carl has come to an end and everybody is happy.  They probably shouldn't be because there a trail of dead people a mile long behind them, but they are happy.  The sister is out of a coma and eating pancakes, Abby and her boyfriend are back together, and Dr. Carl is in an ambulance being taken to jail.  Or is he.... we are warned that Dr. Carl will return!  I don't know if he'll still have a TV show when he escapes, as I'm not sure if his contract has an escaped murderer clause, but we'll be happy to see him.

Psycho Storm Chaser has a couple of things working in it's favor.  Check that, it has one thing one in it's favor and that would be Rib Hillis as Dr. Carl.  Fresh off of watching a crap ton of 'Wrong' Movies where Mr. Hillis played an unhinged psycho a few times, we must say that Mr. Hillis does play it well.  Dr. Carl bought the crazy in pretty much every scene he showed up in and that made the movie worth watching.

The other stuff... well... I guess it had to be in there to pad out the running time, but it just wasn't as interesting or near as entertaining as watching Dr. Carl beat people to death with a baseball bat.  But then what is?

Four Psychos!!!