Disaster movies used to be everywhere. Back in the late 1900s, disaster films tackled everything from tsunamis and plane crashes to global pandemics. Over time, though, they lost some of their widespread global pull. As the world grew more digitally interconnected, real-life crises became international headlines in the 24-hour news cycle, making old-school Hollywood CGI destruction feel a bit too close to home. Today, traditional disaster films mostly occupy a smaller, niche corner of pop culture, occasionally inspiring high-stakes emergencies on network procedurals like 9-1-1. But a massive, big-budget disaster movie event? That has been a rare sight ever since the 2024 Twisters sequel starring Glen Powell.
Even so, storytellers keep finding sharp, character-driven ways to trap people in chaos when human behavior is pushed to the breaking point. Netflix is leaning into that exact formula with its next release. Audiences have shown a steady appetite lately for tight psychological thrillers where the danger isn’t just external. Netflix’s upcoming comedy-drama film, The Storm, explores what happens when a group of friends faces a potentially life-ending catastrophe.
The story unfolds in northern Sweden, where a man named Filip is celebrating his 45th birthday. It’s supposed to be a triumphant milestone: he and his wife have just bought a lavish farm estate, and they’re eager to show it off to their inner circle. But right as the party gets going, a violent storm rolls in, trapping everyone inside. Before long, the real destruction stops coming from the weather outside and starts coming from within the house. Carefully maintained social performances collapse, polite masks slip, and long-buried secrets start spilling out. As panic settles in and the walls start closing in, ugly meltdowns take over. Whether the natural storm ultimately consumes them or passes them by, the emotional damage inside the room might already be permanent. The Storm hits Netflix in three weeks, premiering globally on Thursday, October 15.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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Who Is Behind ‘The Storm?’
Acclaimed Swedish writer and director Josephine Bornebusch spearheads the film and also steps in front of the camera. Bornebusch is well-known locally for helming series like Love Me, while building an international profile through her work on Baby Reindeer and Bad Sisters. She has put together a stacked ensemble of recognizable Swedish talent, anchored by Vikings star Gustaf Skarsgård as Filip. The main cast also features director Bornebusch herself (as Kina) alongside Jonas Karlsson (Jacob), Filip Berg (Ossi), Aliette Opheim (Caroline), Johan Rheborg (Nicholas), Christopher Wagelin (Henrik), Sara Shirpey (Ninni), Gizem Erdogan (Nattis), Henrik Dorsin (Stefan), Nils Wetterholm (Petter), Editha Domingo (Carmen), and Nicole Levin (Siri).
The Storm premieres globally on Netflix on Thursday, October 15. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates as release day gets closer.
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