(The 2026 SXSW Film Festival ran March 12-18 in beautiful Austin, TX. Check out Chris Reed’s Stormbound movie review, fresh from the fest. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
If you’ve seen movies like the 1996 Twister and/or its sequel, the 2024 Twisters, you know what storm chasers are; at least the Hollywood version. In Stormbound, director Miko Lim’s feature-length documentary debut, we meet Jeff and Sara Gammons, two real-life videographers and photographers who capture footage of some of the most violent atmospheric events on the planet and live to tell about it and then go again. The movie chronicles the why and the how of their very dangerous vocation.
Jeff has been staring death in the face since his birth in 1974. He emerged from the womb with cancer on his spine and has never been entirely on firm health ground since. At one point, a doctor broke every bone in his young legs and put him in braces; that’s one way to fix a congenital issue. To look at him now, he seems like a fully functional middle-aged man. Except that he needs a new kidney … for the second time.
The younger Sara met Jeff a number of years ago to initially discuss work; the two eventually fell in love. Though she has not suffered the health scares he has, she embraces the risks of what they do with the same enthusiasm. Which probably explains why she decides to find out if she could be a viable donor for his new kidney.
Stormbound is filled with some amazing footage of tornadoes and hurricanes, the more recent material captured with drones and high-quality cameras. It stuns. We watch dark clouds form and swirl, high winds gathering, and wonder, “Why are they driving towards the menace?” Because it’s beautiful. Cinematographer Rich Hama (The Rose: Come Back to Me) deserves full credit for sticking with them and delivering his own goods, in IMAX.
Lim complements the gorgeous images with alternating voiceover from both Jeff and Sara, along with a stirring score from composer Chad Cannon (Tokyo Cowboy). As lightning bolts split the sky, the sound design (by Zach Goheen) mixes perfectly with the music, creating an intense audio-visual experience. It almost makes you want to head out there, yourself.
“Storms can teach you to survive,” says Sara in the beginning, and based on the parts of Jeff’s biography we see via archival video (including his stint in New Orleans’ coliseum during Hurricane Katrina, which followed an earlier eye-opener in Florida’s Hurricane Andrew), Jeff is very much a survivor. Certainly, for a man who has never lived in the secure assurance that there is a tomorrow, these storms have offered a path forward. It may seem like madness, but it’s of the best, and most cinematic, kind.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
