Twister (1996) review

Dir. Jan de Bont

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

In my eyes, Twister has long held a stronger significance in the Midwest and southern United States than any other part in the country. One of my good friends, a television meteorologist, specifically chose his field of study after being inspired by the film at a young age. In a larger sense, however, tornadoes are mostly exclusive to the heartland of the country. Unlike hurricanes, tropical storms, or nor’easters — long, drawn-out weather-events that take days to build and unfold over a longer period of time — tornadoes are frequently sudden. You often don’t know there’s the threat of one until the conditions are just right, or the wind kicks up and a severe thunderstorm becomes more than just a raucous downpour.

Growing up in Illinois, I distinctly remember my parents shuffling me into the basement on a couple different occasions. The fear of tornadic activity is instilled in a Midwestern child at a young age, especially for those who grow up in rural communities, where farmlands are essentially a runway for an F-2 or worse. After Steven Spielberg pondered about the possibility of computer effects advancing to the point where they could render a believable CGI tornado (as outlined in this wonderful article by Alan Siegel of The Ringer), and commissioned George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic to shoot a test demo, the ultimate fear of those residing in “flyover country” was finally able to come to life on the big screen.

That aforementioned reel was enough to convince a $90 million+ film to be greenlit, and that’s how we got Jan de Bont’s Twister, which remains an effective disaster flick. Viewing it nearly 30 years after its initial release, it’s also a reminder of when blockbusters weren’t afraid to throw in a little character development, plus a human conflict as central to the plot as an unstoppable storm.

The film opens in June 1969, where a family of three hurries into a storm shelter in search of protection from an imminent storm. The ensuing twister sucks dad into its vortex while his wife and five-year-old daughter, Jo, bear witness. It’s a horrifying sequence, chillingly captured through vivid imagery and innocence. The parents just want to protect themselves and their young daughter. The young daughter just wants the family dog to follow them into the shelter. It hits a little too close to home.

A couple decades later, Jo (Helen Hunt) has grown up to be a storm-chaser, still accompanied by her longtime partner and now soon-to-be-ex-husband, Bill (Bill Paxton). Bill arrives to HQ with his fiancée, Melissa (Jami Gertz), in hopes of finally piloting his new invention named “Dorothy.” The large drum filled with sensor balls is an instrument that is programmed to measure the makeup, velocity, speed, and other characteristics of the average tornado. Building it was ostensibly easier than deploying it. In order for it to work, some brave soul must place it in the path of an oncoming tornado and then live to read the results it generates on a linked computer.

The most contrived part of the whole ordeal is the introduction of a rival scientist (Cary Elwes), who steals the concept for Bill’s instrument in effort to be the first to use it. Screenwriters Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin must not have had a lot of confidence in several tornadoes serving as the primary hazard for their characters, so they throw a half-baked human villain into the mix. This rival scientist has minimal impact on the story as a whole, and would’ve been better left entirely omitted.

With Oklahoma set to experience the worst stretch of storms in over a decade, Jo and Bill, along with their team, comprised of a joyously loud Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, and others, hit the road in hopes of being able to understand the makeup of a tornado, and if they’re “lucky,” bear witness to an F-5 twister, the same one that killed Jo’s father.

One could argue Twister would’ve been plenty good if it had solely focused on the dread, destruction, and devastation of multiple tornadoes. It’s the human drama that makes it a cut above. There’s lingering sexual and marital tension between Jo and Bill that persists, often resulting in arguments while the two traverse country roads in Bill’s truck in search of an opportunity to use his invention. It’s pretty surface-level human interest, but it allows us to care about the individuals behind these pursuits. In the modern age where storm-chasing has become a legit profession, it’s easy to forget the daredevils behind such crusades have problems and trepidations just like the rest of us.

The most complex character is Jo, who is still grieving the horrific loss of her father. She continues to push herself in her work, which means striving to get as close to a tornado as possible, if only “just to see,” as she screams to Bill under a plank bridge. Not even Jo could tell you her end goal in all of this. One doesn’t have to squint to see that even if all of Dorothy’s spherical sensors got sucked into a vortex and generated Nobel Prize-worthy findings, she’d still feel incomplete. She’s chasing something impossible, and deep down she knows it.

While it surely helps that Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt look more like an average married couple than they do movie stars, their chemistry is tight enough to keep the so-called stopgap scenes between twisters viable. However, when the sky darkens, the wind kicks up, and a funnel cloud forms, all eyes are deservedly on the resulting spiral of debris.

Twister gets silly frequently, showing cows oscillating in the vortex, and improbable sequences showing Bill’s truck getting swallowed while both him and Jo are protected by the feeblest of shelters. But dammit if still isn’t an entertaining watch. Don’t bloviate to me about the feasibility of driving a truck 80 miles an hour through a home lifted off its foundation only to come out the other side with the vehicle still looking brand new. It’s so thrillingly captured that I couldn’t care less.

Underrated is Twister‘s generational impact. I opine that the recent rise in storm-chasing by folks in their thirties is a credit to de Bont’s film. One of Jo and Bill’s shared motives for their work is the general ineffectiveness of tornado warnings. When you know a tornado is coming, you have minutes to seek shelter, or worse, try and get off the road. Here’s a blockbuster that at least addressed a real problem and then inspired others to try and seek a solution.

My review of Twisters (2024)

Starring: Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes, Louis Smith, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies, Todd Field, and Jake Busey. Directed by: Jan de Bont.