Netflix’s #3 Trending Movie Right Now Has Everything, Including A Taylor Swift Song, The Rock, And All The Disaster Tropes

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There are some movies that become instant comfort films for me. I’m not sure what it is about disaster flicks in particular that do it. Maybe it’s the extreme circumstances that so effortlessly whisk me away from my own stresses and immerse me in a mess of chaos, claimed opportunities for heroism (or cowardice), and pure, cinematic visual spectacle. While there are some films within the genre that even I can’t defend (despite them still being guilty pleasures), Brad Peyton’s San Andreas isn’t really one of them.

Am I going to try to say this movie about a catastrophic earthquake wreaking havoc on San Francisco is top-tier cinema? No. But for a fun popcorn flick (now streaming with a Netflix subscription), it really gives us everything. What’s more, it checks all the boxes for disaster movie tropes, so I love seeing the 2015 movie trending on Netflix among some of the newer releases like K-Pop Demon Hunters and 28 Years Later.

San Andreas Has A Bit Of Everything

While the movie grabbed my inner Swiftie’s attention with a vice grip the first time I hit play on San Andreas the moment Taylor Swift’s “Style” can be heard on the car radio in the opening scene, it held my attention with its non-stop action and massive, terrifying visuals of earthquake disaster, and the story of a heroic dad trying to save his family, both literally and in the more figurative sense. There’s also its pretty fantastic cast, which includes Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, and Paul Giamatti among them.

While we all need to see an earthquake try to go up against the Rock in a movie, I have to imagine Paul Giamatti’s talents could’ve been put to better use in 2015. Still, San Andreas is all the better for the sheer terror in the Oscar nominee‘s face as his character watches his colleague heroically rescue a child while trying to outrun a collapsing dam. And this is a thing that happens at the beginning of the movie, so you know the mayhem is only getting started.

The Disaster Tropes Are On Point

I’m not signing up for Shakespeare when I put on a movie like Armageddon or Greenland or 2012 (a movie even I won’t try to defend, but was glad when Rich included it along with San Andreas on his list of bad disaster movies that are also kind of great a few years back). It’s not meant to be that deep, and these movies typically offer up a buffet of familiar themes and visuals on which we can feast. I’m talking about heroic sacrifices, beautiful people in danger, mass destruction, last-minute catastrophe predictions being delivered on graphs and charts, and maybe even a redemption arc or two. San Andreas has all of that, and it throws in one of my favorite tropes, which is the jerk character who steps down while the heroes are stepping up — the character you kind of want to see get a heaping dose of comeuppance before the credits roll.

There’s also the family element in San Andreas, as we’re brought into this disaster mid-way through a broken family’s attempts to heal following a terrible loss, which gives us even more reason to root for the Gaines family, not only to survive this nightmare ordeal, but to come out of it reunited.

There are some popcorn flicks that I rewatch and realize aren’t as good as I remembered them to be. It’s been ten years since San Andreas came out, and I still enjoy this Dwayne Johnson movie just as much every time I rewatch it for exactly what it is. And I love seeing that it’s trending on Netflix, as it hopefully means more people are getting a chance to watch it for the first time or revisit it.