In California, a group of ecologists, consisting of ex-firefighter Scott (Van Dien), climate specialist Carla (Ciara) and additional members Jason (Hawkes) and Barbie (Bateman), are faced with the explosion of a CIA bomb in a storage tank on which they were going to place an anti-oil advertisement. When they're framed for the explosion, they must find a way to stop the twister and prove their innocence while avoiding a CIA squad that's prosecuting them. They're helped along by Anthony (Clarke), an engineer of Synco, the company which the tank belonged to.
Fire Twister provides examples of:
- Amusement Park of Doom: A downplayed example. An amusement park without any deliberate hazards is seen, but its visitors are killed off when the twister shows up to it.
- Big Bad: Unlike most disaster movies, which usually have No Antagonist, this one has a big bad. That character in question is Garber, who was responsible for making a deal with the CIA to put the bomb on the storage tank that produced the twister, and paid Jason for the advertisement at the storage tank so that the four ecologists could get framed for it. He even intended the fire twister disaster in the first place.
- Blood Knight: Each of the CIA agents has distinct personality traits, but all of them are basically this. They show off sheer rage while trying to attack the heroes, and they still manage to be violent enough when they kill Jason in a stealthy manner. V particularly continues trying to shoot the fire truck before getting burnt by the twister.
- City with No Name: With the exception of Los Angeles, most of the locations are left unnamed or unaddressed, including the first town that the fire twister gets into.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Garber, although he isn't necessarily a Bad Boss. As if his role as the Big Bad wasn't enough, it's heavily implied by Scott and Anthony's realization that Garber comes from a rival company that wanted to sabotage Synco.
- Covers Always Lie: The fire twister never gets to the size that the theatrical poster (pictured above) shows, and the sky doesn't shift to red either.
- Death of a Child: A notable subverted example for the disaster genre. While most disaster films have a habit of including at least one onscreen child death, this one only has a little girl making it alive from the twister without any serious injury, and Scott goes to bring her mother down from a tree she got thrown into.
- Developing Doomed Characters: Jason and Anthony are shaped out over the course of the plot, but are killed off when they give particularly relevant details about the incident or the twister.
- Disaster Movie: An exception of the typical kind found throughout the genre in that the disaster didn't exactly occur naturally, but was intended by a Big Bad all along.
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Although it's clearly a severe kind of tornado (or firenado, more specifically), since it left a lot of destruction in Los Angeles, the fire twister doesn't cause much effect beyond the range of things near its funnel part, aside from its attraction to heat.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The film's plot takes place over the course of a single day, which is relatively fast in comparison to the progress that the fire twister makes in growth and destruction (as in the case of real-life firenados).
- Genre Mashup: The film is an action/adventure/disaster feature, with additional elements of science fiction.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: V's squad of CIA agents is presumably the one that had planted the bomb from which the fire twister originated. After the twister took a considerable amount of people and buildings, the whole squad ends up being engulfed in it when the protagonists use its attraction to heat to their advantage against the agents.
- Karmic Death: Garber is killed off by an axe that flies out of the fire truck's explosion in the end.
- Kill It with Fire: Not directly this, but the only way to finish off the fire twister is by using an explosive object that's strong enough. This is first attempted unsuccessfully by Anthony with fuel canisters while driving a car, leading to his death. Scott, Carla and Barbie later take Anthony's method with a fire engine truck and a C4 bomb; the only difference is that they jump off from the truck before it touches the twister, thus surviving.
- Man on Fire: Although not explicitly shown, many generic characters are burnt alive by the twister throughout the side scenes between the main plot. This is also how the CIA agents die upon getting caught by the twister.
- Minion with an F in Evil:
- Garber's assistant, while involved in the file destruction with the other Synco employees, is visibly shocked by his Evil Plan to provoke a fire twister. He helps a reporter to get some evidence to prove Garber's intentions, though Garber ends up finding her and killing her.
- The rest of Synco's employees also count, since they didn't know of the incident's causes at all.
- Monster Munch: Pretty much every generic civilian who gets killed by the twister.
- No Full Name Given: Most of the named characters are only referred to by their first name (Scott, Carla, etc.). The only one to have a surname is Mitch Garbernote . Meanwhile, V is known only by her codename.
- No Name Given: Many of the supporting and minor characters don't have a name given.
- The One Guy: Scott remains the only male person in the hero group after Jason and Anthony die.
- Running Gag: V shooting a phone after finishing a call with it.
- Sinister Spy Agency: Among the villains are a squad of CIA agents, led by V, who are chasing the heroes after the Big Bad made a contract with the agency to plant a bomb in the storage tank that created the fire twister.
- Too Dumb to Live: The ecologists and Anthony come across a deeply religious pastor family trying to stop them because they believe that the twister was created by Satan to finish off the "guilty" people in Los Angeles (of which they think the heroes are among). Not only did they think that the twister wouldn't kill them, but they didn't even bother to move from their location when the heroes were escaping, with one member getting killed off by a piece of wood that flied out of the twister and the other two eventually burning to their death.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Nothing is known about the rest of Synco's employees, including Garber's assistant, at the movie's ending.
- World Limited to the Plot: There's no mention of state-wide, national or international reception on the fire twister's destruction in Los Angeles at all, even though it would draw enough attention for nationwide and global awareness.
