4 Thrilling Disaster Movies Where Nature Runs Amok

Roland Emmerich has been Hollywood’s go-to disaster movie expert for decades. Starting in 1996 with Independence Day, the writer-director populated the turn of the century with some of the most memorable movies the genre’s ever seen. The Day After Tomorrow stands out among its peers thanks to its bold plot and impressive special effects. Dennis Quaid stars as a paleoclimatologist whose theory that climate change will usher in a new ice age turns out to be devastatingly accurate when a continent-spanning superstorm causes the Earth’s temperature to plummet rapidly. Although small potatoes by today’s standards, the movie includes more than 400 visual effects shots and includes an homage to The Planet of the Apes in the iconic shot of the Statue of Liberty buried in snow.

Disaster movies were having a moment in the ‘90s (Twister, Deep Impact, the list goes on), and that moment may have reached its apex with Armageddon. Directed and produced by Michael Bay, alongside co-producer and certified-hit-factory Jerry Bruckheimer, the movie about deep-core drillers stopping an asteroid from hitting earth was the highest grossing movie of 1998. And yet, similarly to its predecessor Twister, this space-based disaster movie wasn’t a big hit with critics, who generally couldn’t seem to get past the improbability of the premise. That didn’t stop Armageddon from receiving 40 awards nominations, including four Academy Awards nods for effects, sound, and music.

The Birds may be considered a horror movie by most, but it fits just as comfortably within the disaster genre. Loosely based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, The Birds tells the strange tale of a small Northern California town that becomes a battle ground when birds of all varieties start attacking on sight. Director Alfred Hitchcock and writer Evan Hunter deliberately incorporated comedic elements into the first act of the film only to let the humor drain away as the characters come to terms with their dire situation. But that’s not to say The Birds is pure fiction, Hitchcock was also inspired by a real mass bird attack in Capitola, California where sea birds dive bombed homes and cars en masse after ingesting toxic algae.

In 1996, Twister hit the summer movie season like an F5 tornado. The action-thriller about estranged weather researchers tracking a deadly tornado was the second-highest grossing film of the year, making $495 million worldwide. Although critics were mixed on the movie (Roger Ebert called it “loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment”), audiences didn’t seem to care as they purchased an estimated 54.7 million tickets in the US alone. The special sauce that keeps Twister a must watch is undoubtedly the creators. The movie was directed by action veteran Jan de Bont (Speed, Minority Report) with a script by celebrated author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park). Sprinkle in leading performances from Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton and it’s easy to see why Twister was a perfect storm at the summer box office.