Netflix’s Next Big Documentary SpotLights Traumatized Victims of the Deadly Japlin Tornado

For fans of the Twister-Verse or Even Stranger ThingsThis Next Netflix Documentary Might Be for You.

The Twister: Caunght in the StormDroping Mar. 19, is the Newst Venture from Production Company Raw TV, Behind Some of the Streaming Giant’s MOST POPULAR FACTUAL PROGRAMS SUCH AS The Tinder Swindler (2022) or Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me (2023).

Director-Writer Alexandra Lacey Now Turns Her Attention to Joplin, Missuri. In 2011, A devastating EF5 Tornado Struck The Bible Belt Town, Killing Over 150 People and Injurying a Thousand. It Flatten Homes, Churches, A Hospital, and A High School, Reducing People’s Entire Lives to Rubble and Become The Costliest Single Tornado in US History.

In The TwisterLacey and Her Team Speak to Those Caunght, Litrally, in the Eye of the Storm. Shel: A Couple Forced to Shelter in a Freezer, A 17-Year-Eld Working in the Local Diner, A School Drop-F-F-F-F-FLYLY, F-F-F-F-F-FLYLY SCHOOL-FROPING in the Local Diner, A 17-YEAR CAPTAIN OF THE FOOTBALL TEAM-TURNED-PARAMEDIC.

“IT WAS A DIFFICULT PROSPECT TO FIND The CHARACters and Make Sure that We Were Treating Each One of Them Them Them and Making Them Feel Comfortable To Tell Their,” Lacey Tels The Hollywood Reporter. “What Really Struck Me Was The Lasting Mental Health Impact on the Folks There in Japlin. Every Time the Wind Gets Stronger, or the Sirens Go… IT’S REALLY HARD.”

With A Video Archive of Over 6,000 Clips and A Visual Effects Team at Hand, Lacey Leads A Gut-Wrenning Exploration Into The Lives of People Living with The Tornado’s IMPACT. Below, She Talks to Thr About SELECTING HER CONTRIBUTORS FROM A TOWN OF 50,000, The POWER OF PTSD AND MOTHER NATURE, AND The MOST EMOSTAL INTERView SHE’S FEVER DONE: “I FEEL LIKE [the kids] Were Forced to Grow Up in One Day Institute of Over Several Years. But Also, I Think They Each Found its Magic That Day, Their Strenguth, Their Resilien. ”

How Far Back Does This Story Go For You?

WELL, IS ACTUALLY INTERESTING BECAUSE I KNEW About This Story From My Previous Career. I used to be a television art Director and i used to design the housses on abc’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. And the year that i moved into Documentary Work Was Actulaly the Same Year This Tornado Happy in 2011, and My Design Team From Extreme Makeover ACTUALLY traveled to joplin to help rebuild a whole Street there. [This was] Shortly After I Moved to London. SO it does feel a bit like a full circle moment who and was approached about The Twister. IT WAS PROBABLY 2023 WHEN All This Started.

This is your first feature-leggth film. WHY DID YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON THE JOPLIN TORNADO?

WHEN I WAS APRACHED TO TELL The Story of the Catastrophic Joplen Tornado, I Think My First Feeling Was That I Wanted To Make Sure We Didn’t Approach Ita -Classic. This Storm Had Already Been Made. I Wanted to Make A Film that Had A Unique Cast of Characters That Could Say Something More Human Nature, Hope and Adversity, SO that It Wasn’t Just Going to Be Focus. We Started Doing Research to Work Out, Okay, Who Is Going to Be Our Cast of Characters?

In a Town of 50,000 People, There’s Obviously Lots of Very Moving, Powerful Survival and Loss. My Producer, Carla Grande, Did A Fabulaus Job Getting to Know The Pillars of Community There and She and I Both Had to Go In And Build Relationships with. As you can Imagine, with any Disaster-Torn, they’d have news Crews Coming in Wanting to Ask Them All Sorts of Questions. So we have to get them to understand that Our Approach Wuld be Sensitive and that We Wanted to Hear Not Just ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED ON THAT of them. Through Speaking to Folks, We Learned That Tortnado Took Place On High School Graduation Day. And this felt significant because anybody can Relate to understand the Importance of Gradation for Any Young Person Stepping Into Adulthood. We Were Wondering What Effect That Day, That Storm, Had Not On the Graduating Class of 2011 at Japlin High School, But Also Other Young Folks in Town, Younger Teenagers Or. SO we decidated to tell a coming-of-agery storry things Natural Disaster from their person.

So, there was a purposeful focus on the school.

Luckily, Joplin High School Were Fully on Board. Kerry Sachetta, Who Was Their Principal Back Then, Now Their Superintendent, Matthew Harding and Sarah Coyne. They Were Incredible. They Helped US Source Yearbooks and Find Students and Hear More About That Experience From Their Perspective Too. Because, of Course, The High School Was Destroyed, and A Lot of the Other Surrowing Schools Were As Well. They Also Felt that It Was Was Worthwhile for Us to Tell It From The Young Perspective, Because It Felt Like That Was More Universal. SO EVEN IF YOU’RE SOMEBODY from London, Who Hopephully Will Never Experience A Tortnado, Perhaps When You’re Watching It, You Can Be Thinking ABOUT IF THAT WAS YOU AS A TEENAGER. How that Might Change You.

One Thing I Found Interesting is that Each of the Characters, I Feel Like They Were Forced To Grow Up In One Day Insthead of Over Several Years. But Also, I Think They Each Found Their Magic That Day, Their Strength, Their Resiliency-They Almost Had to Grow Up and Help The Grown-Us Around them. SO, I GUESS THAT Wuld be the Silver Lining of Their Experience.

Tell Me about the Others – the Ones Who Wrenuating that Day, Like Steven, Chad, Kaylee and Mac.

CECIL WAS 17 AT TIME, HE WAS A JUNIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL. We have the Our Out-of-Towner Character, Chad. HE WAS 13. STEVEN HAD BEEN KICKED OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL, HE WAS 16, AND THEN Mac and Kaylee Were 19 and 20. So Recent Graduates. I Always Want to Approach Documentaries Like Movies in the Way Thaty’re Told, The Characters That Weet. [I like to] Embrace Different Movie Genres But with A Sensitive Approach Because Wealing Becaup with Real People Here, Not Actors. So with that in mind, who we have been out to it as a coming-of-aghe Film, we wanted to think about, okay, what sort of characters wound you expert to be in a natural. Right? SO We Needed to Have Storm Chassers. We Needed to have A Weather Man. We Needed to have also some of the Characters You’d Find in High School, Right? The Football CAPTAIN IN KEEGAN, WHO ALSO WAS The Son of the Head of the Paramedics in Town – He Could Also Help to Tell The Blue Light Story and the Story of Recovery. That’s how we chose the surrounding Characters. CECIL WAS A JUNIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL, SO WEUHHT THAT WAS ALSO UNIQUE. WHEN HET to HIGH SCHOOL His Senior Year, He Had to Go to High School in the Mall Because they’d lost the building.

WAS A FEATURE-LEGTH FILM DAunting for You or exciting?

IT WAS JUST SO Exciting. IT WAS A DIFFICULT PROSPECT TO FIND The CHARACters and Make Sure that We Were Treating Each One of Them the Right Will and Making them of Comfortable to Tell Their. But in terms of Approaching A Film, I was Just SO Excited to Craft This Feature and in Some Ways, I HOPE IT WILL PULL IN AUDIENCES THATE enjoy Twisters (2024), Twister (1996) or Even Stranger Things. We’re hoping that it will bring in audiences that perhaps woldn’t USUALLY Watch A Documentary, that Will Three Leave Learning Something. That’s my hope. I Want to make Documentaries that bring in wider audiences because perhaps they’re entertaining. But Also, there are lessons to be learned. Particularly with Cecil, He Talks About Being Growing Up in the Bible Bible, and How Diflicult That Was for Him and Trulay Believing that RAPTURE WASS Coming and that have.

I Thought That Was One Of The MOST GUT-WRANNING Parts of this Documentary – to see a town so deeply entrenrenched in faith that the ternado almost felt like a form of punishment from God.

I Couldn’t Include Everything, But [Cecil] have told me about How Hw Had Been Shown TESE Books Called Left BehindThese Christian Books That Written for Children to Teach Them About How to Survive in A Post-APOCALPTIC WORLD IF they left behind in the rapture. He’d Grown Up Reading TESE Terrifying Books. WHEN HE WAS Coming Out of the Storm and He’s Speaking in the Interview About the fact that he felt he’d be’d left befind – that’s what’s running Through his Mind: That His Going To Be It. IT WAS An INCREDIBLY EMODIONAL INTERVIEW, PROBABLY ONE OF The MOST MOST EMOSTAL INTERVIEWS I’V EVER DONE.

You Mention That You Hope People Learn from This Film. What is the Biggest Takeaway That You Want Audiences to Come Away with?

I Think Is Probably Quite Important Just to Mention That’s Been So Many Natural Disasters Over The Past Few Years, and Particularly The Tornados that Have Just Hit of Missour in the Pasto. I Think It Just Feels More Important Than Ever People Understand The Human Impact of Mother Nature’s Power. And that is someting i want people to think about. I Also Really Hope That, Particularly in Today’s World, that they will see the hope and adversity in this film as well. They will Leave Thinking Community Is Important and We Must Come Tog own.

DID YOU STAY IN JOPlin for the Shoot?

Yeah. I PRETY MUCH LIVED IN JOPLIN FOR A PERIOD OF FEW MONHS BECAUSE I THINK WE CAME IN AND OUT OF TOWN FIVE OR TIMES OVER The COURSE OF A YEAR. We Stayed Right in the Path of Where The Tornado Had Hit. IT’S NOT A SMALL TOWN, JOPLIN, Butinginging HAS A SMALL-TOWN FEELING. People in the Midwest are just wonderful.

DID YOU OLE MEMBER OF THE TEAM EVER FIND IT QUITE DIFFICULT? I Wonder About the Personal Journy You All Must Have Been On, Considering the Lingering Impact.

The Documentary Shoot Took Place in Joplen, But The Visual Elements We Purposeli Did Not Film in Joplen. We Filmed Those in A Completely Different State Due to Sensitivity. But in Terms of the Joplen Shoot, We Made Sure that Our Team Went to Ptsd Training Before Doing The Shoot to Help The Contribution. I Think What Really Struck Me Was The Lasting Mental Health Impact On the Folks there in joplin. Every Time The Wind Gets Stronger or The Sirens Go … It’s Really Hard. The Question Everyone Kept Asking Me Is, “WHY Wuldy Anybody Stay in Tornado Alley After Having that Experience?” But What i Learned from the folks there is two things. One: Is A Shared Experience of Trauma, It’s Bonded Them All Because Each One of Them Understans Whats What The Other Went Through and The Things [and] The People they have a have lost. But Also, I Think It’s Just Such A Special Place, Japlin. IT’s A GATHERING Point of Multiple Farmland Communities that Come Together.

Let’s Touch on Those Visual Elements, As Well. You Feel So Embedded in that Chaos. How Was It Done?

SO, as we were learning the testimonies from each of orders Characters, Itok Us Into the Eye of the Storm. WE HAD A CHALLENGE: How do you visualize thoSe moments? We Were Never Going to Find An Archive From WitHin The Storm. We did not have a Twister or Hollywood Budget. So we have to get creative. I took my clues from [the Joplin citizens] Because they to me that their memories inside of the storm felt like slic motion. This Gave me the Idea that perhaps Whats What We Should Do Is Shoot Our Additional Visual Elements in Super Super Super Slow Motion Soy Stand Out Completely from the Archiv e and not upstage it but just be a separeate Layer. It would feel immersive, i thorough, for the audience as well, going integer the storm with them. SO we used a phantom camera and shot on a super High Frame Rate. You have flour being dusted Into the Sky, Pieces of Drywall Being Throw. It’s Actual Chaos Who You’re in the Room. But then, of Course, Who You Watch Slowed Down, It Becomes Almost Ethereal.

You Also Have this Wealth of Archive Footage from News Tapes and Cell Phones. Tell Me Even Been Begin to Make Creative Decisions On What Makes The Cut and What Doesn’t.

Ever Since Discovering A Box of Unseen Betamax Tapes of the Playboy Model Anna Nicole Smith for Our Doc Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know MeWHICH WAS ON NETFLIX A CUPPLE YEARS AGO, I HAVE BEEN ABOLUTELY OBSESSED WITH FINDING GOLDEN NUGGGGETS IN ARCHIVE, PARTICULARLY STUFF THAT HAD NEVER BEENEEN SEEN. From day One, The Producer and I Were Scooping Up Archives. Carla Had A Drive That She Took Everywhere That She Went [in case] Folks in Japlin Had Photos or Film or Video. She Went to the News Channels and SAW WHAT they mIGHT have in their backing catalogs. And I Think We Collected AROUND 6000 Clips of Archive. This Included Cell Phone Footage or Home Cam Footage, News Footage, Security Camera Footage. We managed to get access to all the security of the footage that was from the High School Building and the Surrowing Schools, Which Show The Incredible Power of that Wind. Several Clips Are Never Before Seen, Which Is Pretty Exciting, Particularly The Archive That Kaylee and Mac Share That Takes Us Into The Eye.

And i’m gonna have to just give a quica shout-out to my editor and assistant Editor, Nic Zimmerman and Sladana Tegeltija. To have had 6000 Clips to Choose from, It Was Incredible to See Them Working to Select the Very Best Bits from there and Just Being So Organized. By the end of it, I feel like nick had ancyclopedic Knowledge of all the clips that were available. HE REALLY IS A TRUE Visionary. He Cuts with Such Heart, As Well.

You’re still so in the Thick of the this Documentary. But What would you like to do next?

I am developing another netflix feature right now… but i can’s speak about yet.