Disaster Mon Amour

Part film analysis, part social commentary, Thomson’s (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) ultimately unsatisfying work uses disaster films to consider how audiences react to both real and imagined calamities. He argues that because of our collective fear of death and the unknown, we appear to exist between two extreme poles: “unremitting banality” and lives riddled with catastrophe. The disaster film, he says, lets viewers experience the unpredictable and unknown in a safe setting. The strongest sections of the book are the first three chapters, where Thomson provides solid examples of the disaster film genre, such as San Andreas and The Towering Inferno. However, Thomson’s thesis becomes muddled as he quickly shifts from discussing depictions of disaster on film to musing on the U.S. government’s policies under President Donald Trump and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic; this results in a fragmentary, often jarring narrative (though Thomson does warn readers about this in the first chapter).