Twisters is a Blast (Review)
Not every movie we love is some flawless masterpiece. Sometimes we just love them because of how fun they are or because they’re comforting. That’s the beauty of movies. You don’t need to have some long or deep personal reason to love one. You don’t need to provide an analysis of the craft on display just to show how much you enjoy something. Sometimes you just love them because you love them. Sometimes you just want to have fun for a couple hours, and there’s movies that provide exactly that.
I feel like 1996’s Twister is the granddaddy of those kind of movies. That movie is just the textbook definition of big, cheesy dumb summer fun (and a technical marvel at the time), and I think that’s a big reason why it’s become so beloved all these years later. It just nailed its formula so well. And I’m happy to say that 2024’s Twisters also nails that formula perfectly. This is just a straight up great time at the movies.
The movie follows Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones), an ex storm chaser in New York who has a unique ability of figuring out tornado patterns (similar to Bill Paxton’s character in the original). When an unusually large number of tornadoes threaten the state of Oklahoma, Kate reluctantly joins an old friend (Anthony Ramos) to help scan the tornadoes in order to minimize the destruction.
But this is a storm chaser movie, so of course they’re not the only ones out there chasing down these tornadoes. The other main crew being a rowdy, YouTube-famous bunch that live stream their encounters and sell merch. Leading that crew is self proclaimed “tornado wrangler” Tyler Owens (Glen Powell, obviously). As the film rolls along we learn more about both crews, even though Kate and Tyler are mostly our main characters here.
Similarly to how a tornado forms from a blend of warm and cold air (like my elementary school knowledge of tornadoes?), the movie’s greatest strengths are how well they blend together different elements, both character wise and action wise. While the movie mostly follows Kate and Tyler, both their crews are fun with how different they are, with Kate’s straight-man crew being completely different from Tyler’s rowdy and loud one (everyone plays their character perfectly, and the YouTuber crew is hilariously accurate). While Kate starts off quiet and timid, her time with Tyler gets her to open up and remind her why she became a storm chaser in the first place. Tyler doesn’t get nearly as much development as Kate, but his confidence and showmanship get put to the test when he starts becoming more interested in Kate. It goes without saying that this is largely in thanks to the performances of Daisy Edgar Jones and Glen Powell. Jones brings a lot of emotion and heart to Kate, and Powell is as reliably and effortlessly charming as ever. In terms of the characters, these guys are easily the high point of the movie, both in the big scenes and the quiet.
But, much like the original, the stars of the show aren’t actually the stars, but the tornadoes themselves. There’s plenty of big screen action and mayhem that you’re looking for with movies like this, and again there’s a fantastic blend here. Lee Isaac Chung, whose previous films are much smaller compared to this, really knocked it out the park. There’s a great blend of practical and visual effects (the movie was apparently also shot on film, enhancing that 90’s feeling). Chung also knows when to give us those beautiful wides of the tornadoes in all their glory and destruction, as well as tight, claustrophobic shots enhancing the terror and intensity (there’s an incredible oner that had me sinking into my seat). The sound design only enhances that intensity. There’s obviously a couple times where we are put into the middle of tornado mayhem, and at a point when one ended, I heard someone behind me let out a huge sigh of relief.
Not everything works. The cast, while great, don’t hold a candle to the original crew we follow (though, let’s be honest, the legendary Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are extremely hard to live up to). And I feel it could be a tad bit shorter. But these are super minor gripes to an otherwise really fun time.
I said it in the title but I’ll say it again: Twisters is just straight up fun. It’s not some game changer or anything like that, but it’s good old fashioned summer blockbuster escapeism, and that’s all you really need from something like this. If you aren’t a fan of the original, then you probably won’t like this either, as it largely follows the same formula (for any newcomers out there, you don’t have to watch the first one to enjoy this). But if you do like the original, then you’ll definitely have fun with this. It’s exactly what you expect it to be, and I mean that in the best way possible. I took my family to see it in a pretty packed theater, and I think that’s the best way to see it. Check this out on the biggest screen you have. You’ll have so much fun.
