The Twister is a Netflix documentary about the real-world twister that pounded Joplin, Missouri in 2011. It uses a lot of footage taken by the folks who lived through it plus a lot of hand-wavey hooey fake footage of this and that. It’s a strong story with powerful footage in a documentary that kind of keeps saying the same thing over and over after awhile.

Parts of it – mainly the first half – are very good. Very foreboding and the footage is frightening. The aftermath though is much less interesting, far less unique, and eventually gets cludgy and boring.

Which is a mean thing to say since the survivor interviews are powerful, but you can feel the documentarians stretching their limited material to get to ninety minutes.

It’s mostly a pretty decent documentary, especially if you like to watch disaster unfold on people’s poor cell phone. But it needed to be shorter.

Score: 74