It’s Tornado Time

Late in Twisters, as an Oklahoma town is under threat from a giant tornado, a group of strapping heroes is seeking shelter and settles on an old-fashioned movie palace. In that moment, it’s a practical choice—the theater is a big space with no windows—but I think I knew what the director Lee Isaac Chung was getting at: When all hell breaks loose, at least cinema will protect us. That’s the best way to think about the old-school spectacle of Twisters, a 2024 update to the 1996 summer blockbuster Twister that relies on mostly the same ingredients: wind, rain, cyclonic storms, and hot scientists tooling around in pickup trucks.

Honestly, the most surprising thing about Twisters is that it took Hollywood this long. Weather-related calamities are always a hot ticket, and Jan de Bont’s original, though no masterpiece, is a baseline ideal for ’90s action fun. Twister built a template that its sequel largely follows: loud and fast-paced but anchored by a reliable ensemble spouting meteorological technobabble amid the chaos. But compared with the high-octane de Bont, who was behind hits such as Speed and The Haunting, Chung is a curious choice. He’s an art-house favorite who was Oscar-nominated for the sensitive, textured Minari. Why pivot from that to tornadoes?

On the one hand, the quickest way to get a movie made in Hollywood is to slap on a familiar title. On the other hand, you can quickly guess what Chung might have seen in the project, given that he spent most of his childhood in Arkansas, where Minari is set, and has a good sense for depicting the charm and fragility of rural America. Twisters takes place amid the towns and farms of central Oklahoma, in part of the region known as Tornado Alley, where a once-in-a-generation outbreak of storms has drawn scientists, storm chasers, and amateur disaster enthusiasts looking to explore some very dangerous weather. There’s no explicit mention of just what might be causing more and more tornadoes to pop up, and the film walks a nonpolitical line on climate change while still nodding at how the times certainly are different.

It couldn’t be me doing all this storm chasing; as a New Yorker, I still fearfully recall the two little tornadoes that blew through town in September 2010. But Chung assembles quite the charming array of talent here, led by the square-jawed Glen Powell as Tyler Owens, a YouTuber who “yeehaws” in his cowboy hat as he drives toward storms with the cameras running. His supporting crew is blown in from the Sundance Film Festival, including indie darlings such as Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O’Brian, and Brandon Perea. On the more recognizable side are Daisy Edgar-Jones, playing a resolute meteorologist named Kate who’s working to overcome the trauma of watching a twister kill some of her researcher pals years prior, and Anthony Ramos as the corporate storm expert Javi, whom Kate is assisting in his effort to make 3-D-scans of tornadoes.

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Yes, much like it is for Helen Hunt’s character in the original Twister, it’s personal for Kate. She grits her teeth every time she sees a condensation funnel, and she’s invented some strange tech intended to neutralize tornados on sight. That’s about all Edgar-Jones has to work with here—her character is a bit of a zero, especially when she’s matched up with Powell, whose charisma can give the thinnest caricature some teeth. Kate and Tyler start out as frenemies and end up partners, the same path Powell follows in hit rom-coms such as Set It Up or Anyone but You—only this time lots of hail and lightning surround the banter, a helpful distraction from the duo’s lack of chemistry.

But the quasi-romance should be secondary, because every viewer goes to Twisters to see … twisters. The movie has plenty of ’em, photographed on honest-to-goodness celluloid—one of Chung’s smartest decisions. Every time Twisters threatens to lag over its two-hour run time, some more rip-roaring storm action revs everything back up. If you can see the film in IMAX, or in one of those 4DX theaters that jostles your seat around and sprays water in your face, I recommend it. Chung has a nice grasp of his supporting characters, and he takes pains to dwell on the aftermath of every horrible storm, but in Twisters, the action is the juice, and the bigger and louder your viewing experience, the better.