The Ice StormMovies like The Ice Storm
- Key Features:
- Dysfunctional family, Infidelity, Suburban life, 1970s, Coming-of-age, Moral decay, Existential crisis, Loss of innocence, Social commentary, Secrets, Tragedy, Cold War, Nudity-moderate, Alcoholism
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, cynical
- Target Audience:
- Adults, Drama enthusiasts, Indie film aficionados, Those interested in social commentary
- Emotional Arc:
- Discomfort → Dread → Despair
The Ice Storm

In the weekend after thanksgiving 1973 the Hood family is skidding out of control. Then an ice storm hits, the worst in a century.
The Ice Storm
When a devastating winter storm freezes over the whole of North Carolina, climatologists and disaster relief experts are called in before the entire East Coast is destroyed.

A shady lawyer attempts a Christmas Eve crime, hoping to swindle the local mob out of some money. But his partner, a strip club owner, might have different plans for the cash.

When a piece of the massive comet "Copernicus" collides with the Earth, it knocks the planet off of its axis and unleashes a disaster never before witnessed. Dr. James Mayfield and his highly trained research team are the only ones who can re-align the axis. With his wife and teenage son in mortal danger, Dr. James Mayfield calls on his crack research team to help realign the planet's axis before the effects of the catastrophe are irreversible.

A storm is coming. No one could predict it. No one can measure it. Now one family must survive it. You can't come in from the cold.

As a new day begins in the town of Silverton, its residents have little reason to believe it will be anything other than ordinary. Mother Nature, however has other plans. In the span of just a few hours, an unprecedented onslaught of powerful tornadoes ravages Silverton. Storm trackers predict that the worst is still to come, as terrified residents seek shelter, and professional storm-chasers run toward the danger, hoping to study the phenomenon close up and get a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

A massive influx of glacial melting triggers a new ice age in the Northern Hemisphere, forcing a family to make their way across the ice-covered landscape before they are frozen out for good.

Charlie Price, a former scientist turned science fiction author, starts living one of his novels when the Federal Science Foundation's weather experiments escape control and turn disastrous.

When a father is forced to abruptly depart for work, he leaves his children, Aidan and Mia, at their holiday home in the care of his new girlfriend, Grace. Isolated and alone, a blizzard traps them inside the lodge as terrifying events summon specters from Grace's dark past.

Forced underground by the next ice age, a struggling outpost of survivors must fight to preserve humanity against a threat even more savage than nature.

Annie Wilson, young widow and mother of three, makes her living foretelling others' futures—though her own has become cloudier than even she can see. Threatened by a client's violent husband and plagued by visions of a missing local woman, Annie finds herself pulled into a thicket of lies and deception in which her extraordinary gift may ultimately get her killed.

A stranger named Silas flees from a devastating storm and finds refuge with Tom and Gillian on their farm. While struggling with the Storm, Silas seems to be the only one who can help Tom and Gillian to find their son but there are other more dangerous forces out there, that are waiting for the three.

An uptight, conservative businesswoman accompanies her boyfriend to his eccentric and outgoing family's annual Christmas celebration and finds that she's a fish out of water in their free-spirited way of life.

Two families' idyllic ice-fishing vacation turns deadly when they awaken a creature beneath the frozen lake, forcing them to rely on each other if they want to make it safely back to land.

Liz McAdams is haunted by the memories of a tornado that destroyed her home 25 years ago. Now a professional storm tracker, she and her family are in danger once again as another devastating twister rapidly gains momentum. Caught in the path of destruction, Liz and her estranged husband struggle to save those they love...

As the permafrost melts in Alaska, underground rivers of volatile liquid methane form which sets off a series of devastating earthquakes. Forced apart by this violent occurrence, one family must find each other during the holidays and work to stop the deadly rivers that could cause a worldwide catastrophy.

In October 1991, a confluence of weather conditions combined to form a killer storm in the North Atlantic. Caught in the storm was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail.

After her husband deserts her, working-class mother Ray Eddy is in great need of money to find a home. Lured by the possibility of easy cash, she joins Lila, a widowed Mohawk who earns a living by smuggling immigrants from Canada to the U.S. across the St. Lawrence.

After an unprecedented series of natural disasters threatened the planet, the world's leaders came together to create an intricate network of satellites to control the global climate and keep everyone safe. But now, something has gone wrong: the system built to protect Earth is attacking it, and it becomes a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything and everyone along with it.

Lauren wants to rebuild her community, including her family home, in the aftermath of a devastatingly disastrous storm.

In Angels in the Snow, the affluent, yet troubled Montgomery family hits the road for a special Christmas in the mountains.

A volcanic eruption in Iceland sends a glacier towards North America, causing everything in it's path to freeze. A family man struggles to escape the onslaught of the coming ice age.

San Francisco becomes a target for waves of destructive meteors after a rogue comet orbits around the earth... For astronomer, Michelle Young, what was meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event, soon turns into her worst nightmare as thousands of meteors break the surface of the atmosphere and bombard the city of San Francisco.

Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.

A dishonest insurance salesman's life quickly disintegrates during a Wisconsin winter when he teams up with a psychopath to steal a rare violin at the home of a reclusive farmer.

When Holly’s dark secret is accidentally uncovered by her new emotionally unstable neighbor Tom, they are pulled into a violent confrontation with her father, who will do anything to keep the secret hidden.

When an energy experiment goes haywire, a rash of massive hurricanes rips across North America. A high school science teacher must get his family to safety before the hurricanes merge, creating a "hypercane" with the power to wipe the US off the map.

This Christmas, a super frozen object is going to slam into the Earth. In the middle of a small town, and very quickly, dreams of a "White Christmas" will turn into a FROZEN NIGHTMARE.

A brother and sister are torn apart when their parents die tragically in a tornado. While he moves to Seattle to be away from the memory, she devotes her life to studying storms and weather patterns. When she discovers the threat of a powerful series of tornadoes are heading for Seattle, she must convince her brother and the entire city that she is not crazy; and they are in grave danger

An Alaskan town is in danger of destruction by a mystical snow globe that appears on a family's doorstep, wrapped like a Christmas gift, and causes deadly "natural" disasters in their own town, while simultaneously occurring in the snow globe.

A Chicago weather man, separated from his wife and children, debates whether professional and personal success are mutually exclusive.

When three skiers find themselves stranded on a chair lift at a New England ski resort that has closed for the next week, they are forced to make life or death choices that prove to be more perilous than staying put and freezing to death.

When his dysfunctional family clashes over the holidays, young Max is disillusioned and turns his back on Christmas. Little does he know, this lack of festive spirit has unleashed the wrath of Krampus: a demonic force of ancient evil intent on punishing non-believers.

In a small town on Christmas Eve, a snowstorm brings together a group of young people. They soon find their friendships and love lives colliding, and come Christmas morning, nothing will be the same.

In 1988, a teenage girl's life is thrown into chaos when her mother disappears.

In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.

Mary moves back to her suburban hometown to find that the suburbs are scarier in more ways than she ever remembered.

After a violent storm, a dense cloud of mist envelops a small Maine town, trapping David Drayton and his five-year-old son in a local grocery store with other local residents. They soon discover that the mist conceals deadly horrors that threaten their lives, and worse, their sanity.

A man's affair with his friend's much-younger daughter throws two neighboring families into turmoil.

It is 2020. Findings by environmental scientist Professor Thom Archer suggest that Halo, the corporate energy company drilling on the Greenland Glacier are causing it to melt. Archer's warnings are ignored, so he heads to the Arctic to find indisputable evidence. Upon arrival, he realizes humankind is under immediate threat, and races home to save his family. The glacier collapses, with devastating consequences. Astonishing weather patterns emerge and plunge the world's temperatures into steep decline.

A manic-depressive mess of a father tries to win back his wife by attempting to take full responsibility of their two young, spirited daughters, who don't make the overwhelming task any easier.

A father, who can't keep his promises, dies in a car accident. One year later, he returns as a snowman, who has the final chance to put things right with his son before he is gone forever.

Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.

Massive earthquakes open the Arabian tectonic plate, resulting in unstable weather and freezing temperatures that will be unsurvivable by nightfall. Attempting to reach safety, a vacationing family in Egypt must battle the rapidly cooling temperatures that usher in a new Ice Age, covering the Sphinx, Pyramids, and Sahara Desert with mountains of snow.

A Bedouin village in Northern Israel. When Jalila's husband marries a second woman, Jalila and her daughter's world is shattered, and the women are torn between their commitment to the patriarchal rules and being true to themselves.

In the 1950s, a Japanese-American fisherman is suspected of killing his neighbour at sea. For Ishmael, a local reporter, the trial strikes a deep emotional chord when he finds his ex-lover is linked to the case. As he investigates the killing, he uncovers some startling clues that lead him to a shocking discovery.

Married couple Jack and Terry Linden are experiencing a difficult period in their relationship. When Jack decides to step outside the marriage, he becomes involved with Edith, who happens to be the wife of his best friend and colleague, Hank Evans. Learning of their partners' infidelity, Terry and Hank engage in their own extramarital affair together. Now, both marriages and friendships are on the brink of collapse.

A fictional story within the historical context of the disastrous flood that engulfed the Dutch coastal province of Zeeland in 1953. When their farmhouse is destroyed by the flood, teenage mother Julia gets separated from her baby boy, whom she kept hidden in a box. She is saved from drowning by a young air force lieutenant, who agrees to go help looking for Julia's little son.

An Alaska State Trooper partners with a young woman who escaped the clutches of serial killer Robert Hansen to bring the murderer to justice. Based on actual events.

While holidaying in the French Alps, a Swedish family deals with acts of cowardliness as an avalanche breaks out.

When a deadly airborne virus threatens to wipe out the northeastern United States, teacher Elliot Moore and his wife Alma flee from contaminated cities into the countryside in a fight to discover the truth. Is it terrorism, the accidental release of some toxic military bio weapon -- or something even more sinister?

Something lurks off the coast of Block Island, silently influencing the behavior of fisherman, Tom Lynch. After suffering a series of violent outbursts, he unknowingly puts his family in grave danger.

With the help of her coach, her mom, and the boy who drives the Zamboni, nothing can stop Casey Carlyle from realizing her dream to be a champion figure skater.

When a solar eclipse sends a colossal blast of super chilled air towards the earth, it then sets off a catastrophic chain of events that threatens to engulf the world in ice and begin a new Ice Age.

As storm season intensifies, the paths of former storm chaser Kate Carter and reckless social-media superstar Tyler Owens collide when terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed. The pair and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.

A hilarious and heartfelt holiday tale centered around everyone's favorite disaster-prone middle school student, Greg Heffley, which finds him desperately fighting to stay off Santa's naughty list as the family prepares for a major winter snowstorm.

One woman's journey for self-discovery and turns into a harrowing tale of survival.

Barely escaping an avalanche during a family ski vacation in the Alps, a married couple is thrown into disarray as they are forced to reevaluate their lives and how they feel about each other.

In December 2004, close-knit family Maria, Henry and their three sons begin their winter vacation in Thailand. But the day after Christmas, the idyllic holiday turns into an incomprehensible nightmare when a terrifying roar rises from the depths of the sea, followed by a wall of black water that devours everything in its path. Though Maria and her family face their darkest hour, unexpected displays of kindness and courage ameliorate their terror.

A coming of age dramedy where infidelity, real estate, and Lyme disease have two families falling apart on Long Island in the early eighties. Scott, 15, is at the point in his life when he finds out that the most important people around him, his father, his mother, and his brother, are not exactly who he thought they were. They are flawed and they are human.

In a suburban community, moms and dads, one after the other, mysteriously feel the irresistible impulse to attack and kill their own offspring.

A family intervention goes horrifically awry within the snowy confines of an isolated lake house.

When a young couple goes to a remote wooded lake for a romantic getaway, their quiet weekend is shattered by an aggressive group of local kids. Rowdiness quickly turns to rage as the teens terrorize the couple in unimaginable ways, and a weekend outing becomes a bloody battle for survival.

At a remote Arctic research station, four ecology students discover the real horror of global warming is not the melting ice, but what's frozen within it. A prehistoric parasite is released from the carcass of a Woolly Mammoth upon the unsuspecting students who are forced to quarantine and make necessary sacrifices, or risk infecting the rest of the world.

As the Swedish town of Kiruna sinks, Frigga finds herself torn between her family and her job as security chief at the world's largest underground mine.

During a heat wave, strange clouds start pouring down acid rain, wreaking devastation and panic throughout France. In a world teetering on the edge, a girl and her divorced parents must join forces to confront and try to escape this climate catastrophe.

Clint is a dead man who lives alone in a frozen tundra. However, this isolation cannot bring either evasion or peace. One night, he begins a journey where he must confront his dreams, memories, and visions, crossing the darkness into the light.

A young girl is kidnapped during a powerful storm. Her mother joins forces with her mysterious neighbour to set off in pursuit of the kidnapper. Their journey will test their limits and expose the dark secrets of their past.

The son of a Vietnam War Veteran must deal with neighborhood bullies as well as his dad's post-traumatic stress disorder while growing up in the deep south in the 1970's.

After the death of her husband, the mother of Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom begins to suffer from a mysterious illness. Aware that she is going to have to go into hospital she opens a bank account for the children, so that they can be financially self-sufficient and will be able to avoid being taken into care by the authorities. Unfortunately she also dies and Julie and Jack (the older, teenage children) decide to hide her body in the basement so that they can have free reign of their household. Soon Tom has taken to dressing as a girl whilst Sue has become increasingly reticent, confiding only to her diary, meanwhile Jack and Julie sense an attraction developing for each other. However Julie's new beau, Derek, threatens to unearth the many dark secrets within this family as he becomes increasingly suspicious of Jack.

An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.

A woman must fly back to her hometown when her Alzheimer's-stricken mother wanders into a blizzard. The return home forces her to confront her past.

Richard and Priscilla Parker are an ordinary suburban couple whose lives are invaded and rocked by their hedonistic, secretive new neighbors, Eddy and Kay Otis.

Liu Yue Ping reports to the ICAC about a rich 2G Cao Yuen Yuen who bribed officers of the Hong Kong Correctional Services (HKCS) from inside the prison. William Luk decides to infiltrate the prison as an inmate to conduct his investigation, while his partner Ching Tak Ming and Chief Inspector Lau Po-keung back him up from the outside.

In the Arctic region of Northern Alaska, an oil company's advance team struggles to establish a drilling base that will forever alter the pristine land. After one team member is found dead, a disorientation slowly claims the sanity of the others as each of them succumbs to a mysterious fear.

After an extremely regrettable one night stand, two strangers wake up to find themselves snowed in after sleeping through a blizzard that put all of Manhattan on ice. They're now trapped together in a tiny apartment, forced to get to know each other way more than any one night stand should.

Simon and Robyn are a young married couple whose life is going as planned until a chance run-in with Simon's high school acquaintance sends their world into a tailspin.

When an entire town in upstate New York is closed down by an unexpected snowfall, a "snow day" begins when a group of elementary school kids, led by Natalie Brandston, try to ensure that the schools stay closed by stopping a mechanical snowplow driver by trying to hijack his plow truck. Meanwhile, Natalie's big brother Hal is using this day to try to win the affections of Claire Bonner, the most popular girl in his high school, while Hal and Natalie's father Tom, a TV meteorologist, faces off against a rival meteorologist for weather coverage of the day's events.

Waitress Annie has separated from her suicidal alcoholic husband, Glenn. Glenn has become an evangelical Christian, but his erratic attempts at getting back into Annie's life have alarmed her. High school student Arthur works at Annie's restaurant, growing closer to a new kid in town, Lila, after class. When Glenn and Annie's daughter go missing, the whole town searches for her, as he increasingly spirals out of control.

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

A chunk of dark matter shoots right through earth, causing various worldwide disasters. A family in Los Angeles struggles to survive the ordeal.

During the holiday season, Ethan, a meteorologist, and his wife Addison, a TV news reporter, must put aside their differences and band together to help save others and rescue their missing children from a massive F6 twister that has unexpectedly descended upon their small Texas town.

In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer; a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.

Rick Rambis and his friends are having the time of their lives on Bull Mountain—until the legendary Papa Muntz' son decides to sell the mountain to a sleazy land developer, have the staff fired and turn Bull Mountain into 'Yuppieville'.

A couple becomes lost in a massive storm and seek refuge at a nearby farmhouse, only to be captured by deranged killers.

A man tries to warn his brother away from the new girlfriend he brings home during Thanksgiving, but ends up becoming infatuated with her in the process.

In the last days of a dying logging town, Christian returns to his family home for his father Henry’s wedding. While home, Christian reconnects with his childhood friend Oliver, who has stayed in town working at Henry’s timber mill and is now out of a job. As Christian gets to know Oliver’s wife Charlotte, daughter Hedvig, and father Walter, he discovers a secret that could tear Oliver’s family apart.

Kyle and Sarah Miller have it all: a huge gated house on the water, fancy cars, and the potential for romance in their relationship. He's just back from a business trip and their teen daughter Avery is sneaking out to a party, when four thugs in security uniforms and ski masks stage a home invasion. They want what's in the safe: cash and diamonds. As Kyle stalls them, trying to negotiate for Sarah's freedom, the fault lines in Kyle and Sarah's marriage and the pasts of the four robbers come into play. Is there room here for heroism?

Set in postwar America, a man watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter's new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.

After paleoclimatologist Jack Hall is largely ignored by UN officials when presenting his environmental concerns about the beginning of a new Ice Age, his research proves true when a superstorm develops, setting off catastrophic natural disasters throughout the world. Trying to get to his son, Sam, who is trapped in New York City with his friend Laura and others, Jack and his crew must travel to get to Sam before it's too late.

When two brothers are stranded by a brutal winter storm with an unpredictable father they barely know, the boys begin to suspect their supposed protector may be their biggest threat.

In a politically-divided United States, a man struggles to make it through the Thanksgiving holiday without destroying his family.

After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

Ivan Locke has worked hard to craft a good life for himself. Tonight, that life will collapse around him. On the eve of the biggest challenge of his career, Ivan receives a phone call that sets in motion a series of events that will unravel his family, job, and soul.

A massive asteroid impact on the moon begins causing storms on earth due to the sudden changes in ocean tides. But when further examination is conducted it's discovered that the moon's structure is now entirely unstable -- threatening all life on earth. With time running out, a team of scientists turn to one man, demolitions expert John Redding, in effort to find a solution and secure the moon.

Christmas Eve. On his way to his in-laws with his family, Frank Harrington decides to try a shortcut, for the first time in 20 years. It turns out to be the biggest mistake of his life.

Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. However pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world; someone they don't know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.

The story is based on the real events of 1985. The team of a Russian polar icebreaker “Mikhail Gromov” discovered a giant iceberg. The ship came into collision while attempting to take cover from the weather and is forced to drift with ice along the Amundsen Sea coast. The crew of “Gromov” spent 133 days of polar night trying to find a way out of their icy trap. They have no room for mistakes; one wrong move and the vessel is crushed by ice.

