Twisted
2016 · 14m · Canada
Directed by Jay Cheel
Genres: documentary, mystery
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic
A Canadian drive-in was supposedly destroyed by a tornado during a screening of 'Twister' — or was it? An investigation into urban legend, memory and mythmaking.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Cheel's doing the most boring thing possible—treating an urban legend like it matters—except he's somehow weaponizing nostalgia and collective false memory against itself, which is genuinely unsettling in a way that sneaks up on you.
A formally precise investigation into how cinema and collective memory construct mythology; the restraint in not 'solving' the legend while interrogating the drive-in's cultural position shows real curatorial intelligence about what documentary can hold without answering.
The decision to let interviewees' certainty about a false memory sit unresolved—never cutting away to 'debunk' them—creates a specific kind of unease that costs nothing but makes the whole film hum with doubt.