Twisters isn’t a smart movie, or even a “good” one, if you want to get technical about it. But it is a barrel of edge-of-your-seat fun. Even though this sequel – which follows in the path of James Cameron’s Aliens in the belief that by making the previous title pluralized it makes things sound scarier – has nothing to do with the original outside of some tiny callbacks and the promise of massive funnel clouds. Twisters captures a lot of the same lunkheaded magic the first film offered audiences back in the 90s. Tonally, Twisters is stuck in that final decade of the twentieth century, but that seems to be the main goal here, so it’s pointless to dock it for achieving its goals.
Native Oklahoman meteorologist and former storm chaser Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) has been making a good living in New York City, far away from her once promising career as a technological innovator with dreams of neutralizing tornadoes. (Something involving the same material used to make diapers absorbent, and trust me that it makes less and less sense the more you think about it.) Five years after a massive tragedy left Kate permanently scarred, she’s visited by Javi (Anthony Ramos), a former member of her experimental team back in university. Javi believes he has found the missing piece of technology that could make Kate’s old plan to stop tornadoes in their tracks a reality, but he needs her to come back to Oklahoma, which is experiencing an unprecedented number of storms. Kate nervously agrees. Upon her return, she realizes that the storm chasing scene has changed for the worse. Instead of the usual group scientific researchers, now there are tourists and influencers all keen on experiencing a deadly tornado up close, the worst of them being loudmouthed, reckless, merch shilling Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), whose team of fellow chasers is condescendingly referred to as “hillbillies with a YouTube channel.” After getting off to a rough start, Kate and Tyler begin to realize that they don’t know the other person at all, and their goals have more in common than they thought.
Twisters is yet another mainstream Hollywood blockbuster that’s inexplicably helmed by an indie movie darling. In this case, that director is Lee Isaac Chung, best known for the Oscar nominated Minari. Comparing Twisters to any of Chung’s past work is like comparing a Nerds Rope to fresh produce. Anyone looking for Chung to slip something thoughtful or subversive into Twisters will be sorely disappointed. This is in no way an auteur driven film, and there’s no authorial stamp to be found in Twisters. One of the biggest detractions from Twisters is that it’s a film that could’ve been made by just about any other filmmaker in Hollywood with the same amount of resources and it would probably be just as good.
But that doesn’t mean Chung hasn’t studied the original film or the disaster movie playbook. There’s definitely a lot of camp, playfulness, and homage throughout Twisters that makes for a fun time. The scenery is as gorgeously ominous as it was in Jan de Bont’s first film, and the visual effects eating up the screen and scenery are unrelenting in their terror. Just like the first film, Chung turns these meteorological events into growling, snarling monsters, something underlined nicely by the film’s movie theatre set climax. Every sound effect hits like a ton of bricks, and the score from Benjamin Wallfisch swings for the fences in its approximation of bombastic 90s era action movie scores. Everyone who signed up to work on Twisters has committed to giving the viewer maximum bang for their buck, and it’s probably what people buying tickets to see Chung’s latest want in the first place.
Similarly, the cast knows they just have to be quirky, charming, untrustworthy, loathsome, or irritating; whatever the script asks of them. Powell and Jones have a wonderful give and take, with both exuding confidence, star power, and just a hint of vulnerability to keep things interesting. Ramos is an inspired choice as the film’s most conflicted character, an idealist who also cares about making money. Maura Tierney gets a few witty and nicely played scenes as Kate’s mother. Brendon Perea, Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe, and Katy O’Brian have some fun as Tyler’s assortment of misfit helpers, and Harry Hadden-Paton rounds their crew out nicely as a British journalist along for the ride. Everyone from the biggest to smallest parts gets a chance to be entertaining, and their performances are a perfect fit for Chung’s thrill ride vision.
Twisters is the type of film where I can simultaneously gasp with excitement and chuckle at how absolutely ludicrous, illogical, and inexplicably convenient the whole thing is. It’s a movie that moves deftly from set piece to set piece without overthinking things. It’s very, very stupid, but stupid doesn’t always mean something is bad. If you’ve enjoyed disaster movies of the past for similar reasons, Twisters hits a sweet spot and goes down easy. If this kind of sugar rush cinema sounds like your idea of a nightmare, better off sheltering in place.
Twisters is now playing in theatres everywhere.
