Twisters (2024) review

Dir. Lee Isaac Chung

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Much has already been made on what Twisters‘ official status is when compared to the 1996 disaster classic. By various accounts, it’s a standalone sequel, although in some ways it plays like a remake. This isn’t a superhero movie, where the titular hero needs an excuse to return or another villain to fight. Like another severe weather threat, each storm brings its own set of circumstances and newfound set of victims, and Twisters feels like a logical and mature progression of its predecessor.

The story follows Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Where the Crawdads Sing), a young college student in Oklahoma whose fascination with tornadoes and active weather spawns tragedy very early. In an opening sequence on par with Jan de Bont’s in the original, Kate and her friends are out storm-chasing, and a crucial miscalculation of their equipment leads to three of her friends dying, including her then-boyfriend. Kate and her friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos, In the Heights), who was tracking the destructive storm from afar.

Cut to five years later, and Kate, who is now working at NOAA, reunites with Javi. His love of storms has led him to work at a storm radar company along with a dubious real estate start-up. With technology being readily accessible to all, everyone seems to want a piece of each passing storm, maybe no one more than Tyler (Glen Powell). Tyler is a handsome YouTube celebrity in a cowboy hat and wranglers, who chases storms for video content and sponsor appeal, with the help of a large (sadly underdeveloped) team, comprised of Katy O’Brian, Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebi, and Brandon Perea, and a British journalist (Harry Hadden-Paton), who doesn’t serve much purpose other than to be petrified. Kate and Tyler butt heads at whenever they stop at the same gas stations, but soon, their complimentary skills prove vital for the success of the greater good.

It’s an intriguing slobs vs. snobs setup that, according to my firefighter girlfriend, echoes the kind of competitive and verbal spats between volunteer and career fire departments.

The release of Twisters not only coincides perfectly with the back-half of severe weather season in the Midwest and southern region of the US, but also with Glen Powell’s rising status as a bonafide Hollywood movie star. With star-making turns in Top Gun: Maverick and Richard Linklater’s Hit Man earlier this year, Powell’s suave dynamism is again on full display. He’s the rare package of impossible handsomeness and magnetism that makes it hard to take your eyes off of whatever he is doing.

Blessed so, Powell is aided by a script — written by Mark L. Smith, working off a story by Joseph Kosinski, who directed Maverick — that makes him more than a hunk. His character and purpose takes on another dimension in the second-half of the film I didn’t foresee. Without revealing exactly what it is, a significant part of the evolution of this sequel is that it considers the victims and devastation each tornado brings.

While it might seem unfair that Powell will garner much of the attention despite being a supporting performer, it might also be due to the fact that Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kate is a far more muted presence. Edgar-Jones has a knack for playing more reserved, introspective individuals who are defined by low-key mannerisms. Kate is interesting enough, but when you recall Helen Hunt’s fierce lead performance in Twister, there is a spark absent that also prevents the two drastically different performers from enacting a tangible chemistry.

Twisters was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, whose debut, Minari, was my favorite film of 2020. That was a tenderly textured story of a South Korean family immigrating to rural Arkansas. Chung proved early and often that he could shoot pastoral life with a clearly defined empathy and beauty, and it’s one that is remarkably retained even with a budget nearly 100 times the size of his debut. Shot on 35mm film, Twisters‘ storms look and sound real, even when they’re doing unconventional things such as leaving some of its crucial humans and their vehicles unscathed.

The build-up to the storms and the ensuing damage is quite dimensional. The opening scene has a Final Destination (“Funnel Destination?”) quality to it in the way it build dread, and suggests ugly turns for several involved. That sort of energy is retained throughout. This might be a mostly bloodless PG-13 blockbuster, but Chung has it operate with the feel of a horror movie at times.

There might not be a film released this year more aided by its soundtrack than this one. Ostensibly every popular country singer contributed to the film’s OST in some way, most notably mega-star Luke Combs, whose raucous jam “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” plays at a great moment in the picture. Just when I thought the film maybe used it too early, when it maybe would’ve been better served during an actual storm scene, Chris Stapleton’s “Arkansas” thumps during a tornado montage that shows the perspectives of both Kate and Javi and Tyler’s team. Ominous as ever is the great Charley Crockett’s cover of “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky,” and Lainey Wilson’s original contribution hits the right notes during a somber downturn late in the story.

If loud, unforgiving storms are what you’re searching for, Twisters should give you your fix. There’s a reason it’s difficult to find a positive review of this flick that doesn’t use the word “fun.” It’s cut from the now old-fashioned cloth of entertainment that doesn’t require you to have seen a barrage of earlier works, harbor prior knowledge of existing IP, or even recall the original. Its refusal to get arrested by fan service is laudable. Screenwriter Smith does cop out at elaborating on anything resembling external relevance, with a couple characters remarking about how storms are getting increasingly worse across the world, but the dirty term “climate change” is never used. One wonders if Chung, who made such pointed statements about the immigrant experience in Minari, was steered away from trying to make any kind of larger point by the powers that granted him the privilege of making the picture in the first place. Who can say? But when Twisters cuts loose, which it does quite often, it’s a rousing spectacle that reminds you of the thrills harbored by the disaster movie genre.

My review of Twister (1996)

Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Katy O’Brian, Tunde Adebi, and Harry Hadden-Paton. Directed by: Lee Isaac Chung.