Film

Tower

Name: Tower
Genre: Animation, Crime, Documentary
Released: 2016
Cast: Violett Beane, Chris Doubek, Blair Jackson, Louie Arnette, Josephine McAdam

A documentary built from archival news footage and rotoscope animation, reconstructing the August 1, 1966 University of Texas clock tower shooting almost entirely through the voices of witnesses, survivors, and the bystanders who ran toward danger instead of away. It's tense, restrained, and quietly devastating — less interested in the gunman than in the strangers who became heroes by accident. Good for anyone drawn to oral history and formally inventive nonfiction.

TMDb rating

7.6

If you liked this

Bowling for Columbine2002

Michael Moore's provocative dissection of America's relationship with guns and violence remains the loudest, most quotable entry point into why these tragedies keep happening.

But Moore's showmanship and point-scoring can overshadow the individual stories Tower treats with such careful restraint.

Newtown2016no page yet

An unflinching, deeply humane record of a community rebuilding after unimaginable loss, told through the people who lived it rather than the news cycle that consumed it.

But It offers almost no distance from the grief — no animation, no formal cushion, just raw testimony some viewers will find too much to sit with.

The Thin Blue Line1988

Errol Morris invented modern true-crime reenactment here, using stylised recreation to interrogate memory and truth in a way Tower's animation clearly descends from.

But It's a courtroom mystery about a wrongful conviction, not a crisis unfolding in real time — the tension is intellectual rather than visceral.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

High Noon1952

Both hinge on the same brutal arithmetic — a town full of people and only a handful willing to act while danger stands in the open. Tower asks the question as documented fact; High Noon asks it as myth, decades earlier, in a genre built to romanticize courage rather than record it.

A lone marshal counts down the minutes until a killer arrives, and the film's real subject turns out to be everyone in town who quietly decides to look away.

But It's a black-and-white Western from 1952 — stagey by modern standards, and the crisis is entirely invented rather than a real historical event.

United 932006

A minute-by-minute reconstruction of ordinary people making impossible decisions under fire, built on the same insistence that heroism is mostly improvised, not scripted.

But It's relentless — ninety unbroken minutes of dread with no animation, no narration, no relief valve at all.

Mass2021no page yet

Two sets of parents, one shooter's, one victim's, sit down years later and talk — a devastating companion piece on what violence leaves behind long after the day itself.

But It's a static, dialogue-driven chamber piece; if you want action or reconstruction, this offers neither.

The Elephant Man1980

Gus Van Sant follows ordinary teenagers through an ordinary school day that curdles into catastrophe, capturing the same eerie normalcy-before-horror that Tower opens with.

But It's fictionalised and deliberately offers no explanation or catharsis — some find its cool detachment frustrating rather than illuminating.

Dawson City: Frozen Time2017no page yet

A masterclass in building a true story almost entirely from rescued archival footage, the same faith in found images that makes Tower's reconstruction so haunting.

But The subject — a buried cache of silent-era film reels — has nothing to do with violence or grief; the connection is purely in method.

Vice2018

Adam McKay uses reenactment and stylised nonfiction tricks to make dry political history feel immediate, proof that nonfiction can borrow from anywhere to hit harder.

But It's satirical and glib where Tower is grave and careful — entirely the wrong tone if you want something sober.

Waltz with Bashir2008

An animated documentary about a soldier piecing together suppressed memories of war, sharing Tower's exact bet that animation can carry real trauma rather than soften it.

But The war and politics of 1980s Lebanon are dense and specific; without context some of its weight is lost.

Dog Day Afternoon1975

Same true-event DNA — an ordinary day in a public place explodes into a standoff with police and crowds gathering outside — but Sidney Lumet plays it as tense entertainment rather than solemn record, proving how far identical raw material can travel in tone.

Al Pacino leads a real 1972 bank robbery gone wrong into something that's part thriller, part dark comedy, part media circus — riveting and unexpectedly moving.

But Its energy is showy and theatrical where Tower is quiet and testimonial; if you want solemnity, this will feel almost gleeful by comparison.

In This Corner of the World2016

It answers a question Tower's animation raises but doesn't linger on — what hand-drawn images can do for real mass death when used not for eyewitness reconstruction but for tender, invented memory. Same tool, opposite purpose.

A quietly devastating animated drama that finds unbearable historical horror inside the small domestic rituals of one young woman's life during the bombing of Hiroshima.

But It's fictional narrative, not testimony, and its softness and warmth are the opposite of Tower's clipped, factual urgency.