Featured Image Credit: Netflix/Gene J Puskar/AP/Shutterstock
Topics: Film and TV, Netflix, US News
Rhiannon Ingle
Topics: Film and TV, Netflix, US News
The new Netflix disaster movie has got some very eerie parallels to the town it was filmed in.
Directed by Noah Baumbach, White Noise follows a family's upended life from suburban domestic bliss to tragic dystopian survival in the aftermath a mysterious chemical leak.
Set in Ohio, viewers are beginning to clock how the movie seemingly predicted a real-life disaster that recently took place in the very same town.
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The film, adapted by Don DeLillo's 1985 book of the same title, was first released to Netflix in August of last year.
While it was set in a fictional college town named Blacksmith, the film was shot in various areas around Ohio.
The synopsis dubs the White Noise as an 'absurdist comedy' all about a family 'grappling with love, death and an airborne toxic event'.
With an A-lister cast including the likes of House of Gucci star Adam Driver and Barbie director Greta Gerwig - the film instantly became popular on the streaming platform.
However, less than a year after its release, residents from the village of East Palestine, Ohio, are experiencing the dystopian film tragedy as a reality.
Just under two weeks ago on 3 February, a 50-car freight train carrying vinyl chloride - an extremely hazardous substance - derailed and exploded.
A few days after the train derailment, in which approximately 20 cars were loaded with the harmful chemicals, emergency crews went sent in.
Officials conducted a controlled burn of the spill which released black clouds of hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air.
Over 2,000 local residents were then ordered to evacuate the affected area after concerns of respiratory infections.
One of the most significant plot points in White Noise revolved around a train crash which also resulted in an ominous cloud of toxic chemicals being released in to the air leading to mass evacuations.
It was referred to as the 'Airborne Toxic Event'.
The news certainly rang a bell with audiences as many commented on the similarities between the fallout of the Ohio train derailment and the plot of the Netflix film.
One Twitter user posted: "After a train derails, Ohioans are now living the plot of the movie they helped make."
"I just think it’s so wild that White Noise - a movie that includes a train derailing IN OHIO, causing a Toxic cloud to force people to evacuate came out in August [2022] and then seven months later, an actual train derails in Ohio causing a toxic cloud to force people to evacuate," theorised a second.
Another called it 'crazy' that the plot of the movie shared so much in common with the recent news.
More so coincidental than a prophecy, it's clear that it wasn't just audiences who picked up on the similarities.
An East Palestine resident who also featured as an extra in White Noise, Ben Ratner, told People: "Talk about art imitating life."
Calling the disaster a 'scary situation', Ratner admitted: "You can just about drive yourself crazy thinking about how uncanny the similarities are between what’s happening now and in that movie."