A denounced found footage thriller becomes one of streaming’s biggest hits at the worst possible time

Sometimes, you really have to wonder what goes through the minds of the general public, and how they react to events unfolding in the real world. In the case of HBO Max subscribers, they’ve decided that now is the ideal time to revisit 2014’s found footage disaster thriller Into the Storm, which feels like a bad taste move for one blindingly obvious reason.

The story finds a cavalcade of destructive tornadoes descending on the the sleepy town of Silverton in quick succession, reducing buildings to nothing but rubble, dust, and ash, while causing countless casualties and fatalities. The residents wisely seek refuge any way they can, but a determined team of storm chasers head directly into the eye of the storm in order to get up close and personal with a once in a lifetime event.

As per FlixPatrol, the widely-panned but unexplainably successful film that managed to bring in $161 million at the box office in spite of a 21 percent Rotten Tomatoes score has appeared out of nowhere to become the second most-watched title on HBO Max in the United States, with Hurricane Ian convincing customers that they need to watch a hurricane flick for reasons that remain unknown.

Incredibly, it’s not even the first feature this week revolving around tornadoes that’s experienced an on-demand resurgence, and it may not be the last. It’s a bizarre and very strange phenomenon for at-home audiences to decide that what they really want is to see art imitating life at the most inopportune moment, but each to their own.