The Twister: Caught in the Storm

The Roar That Never Leaves You

I’ve watched The Twister: Caught in the Storm twice now, and both times, I found myself gripping the armrests of my chair like I was bracing for impact. That’s not a metaphor. The film doesn’t just show you the Joplin tornado—it makes you feel it, in your bones, in the pit of your stomach, in the way your breath catches when the sound design ratchets up to a freight-train crescendo. Director Alexandra Lacey has crafted something rare: a disaster documentary that functions as both a historical record and a visceral experience. It’s not just about what happened; it’s about what it felt like to be there, and that distinction makes all the difference.



The film’s greatest strength is its refusal to turn tragedy into spectacle. Lacey, who previously worked on Netflix’s Untold series, avoids the pitfalls of disaster porn by grounding the narrative in the lives of five individuals: Mac and Kaylee, a pair of amateur storm chasers; Cecil, a high school student working a shift at a yogurt shop; Keegan, a football captain turned EMT; and Chad, a 13-year-old meteorology enthusiast visiting from California. Their stories unfold in real time, or as close to it as a documentary can get. We meet them in the hours leading up to the tornado, and by the time the storm hits, we know them well enough to fear for them. That’s no small feat. Disaster films often struggle to make their characters feel like more than just victims waiting for the inevitable, but The Twister invests in its subjects with a quiet, unshowy empathy. When the tornado finally arrives, it’s not just a force of nature—it’s a personal violation.

The sound design is what lingers. I’ve seen my share of tornado footage, but nothing prepared me for the sheer physicality of the audio here. The roar of the storm, captured on cell phones and weather cameras, isn’t just loud—it’s alive, a guttural, almost animalistic growl that seems to vibrate through the screen. It’s the kind of sound that doesn’t just enter your ears; it seeps into your nervous system. In one harrowing sequence, we follow Cecil as he sprints through the yogurt shop, trying to usher customers to safety. The camera shakes, the audio distorts, and for a few seconds, the world narrows to the sound of shattering glass and the panicked shouts of strangers. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to understanding what it must feel like to be inside a tornado. (I say “closest” because, of course, I don’t know. And that’s the point. The film never lets you forget that this is something you can’t truly comprehend unless you’ve lived it.)