Connor
I have not seen the 1996 film ‘Twister’; I was alive when it came out, but not by much and my parents were fortunately not the type of people to take their three year old into a disaster movie.
So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that this thirty year old man had to google the film to even realise it was technically a sequel. Though it stands perfectly well alone.
Lee Isaac Chung directs a movie about a group of committed storm chasers running around tornado alley, a region of the central USA that sees more twisters than any other place on earth, looking for a unique opportunity to gather valuable data.
Let’s take a look.
Our main character is Kate, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. A brilliant meteorologist who used to chase tornadoes, but has been chained to a desk by the trauma of her last encounter with a freak EF 5 twister that she barely survived and several of her closest friends did not.
She is talked into getting back into the game by a fellow survivor to test some new tracking technology that could potentially save lives during an unusually violent storm season.
While on the hunt she and her new team encounter Tyler, a deceptively insightful thrill seeker with a YouTube channel played by walking jawline Glen Powell.
I suppose that’s why they put him front and centre of the movie poster, despite Kate being the main character right? Yeah, it was just the jawline, no other reason…
A story like Twisters is a particular kind of disaster movie. One where all the main characters are actively seeking out the disaster and while the appearance of the true main characters, the twisters themselves, are controlled by the movie makers, they have to at least pretend they are unpredictable.
There’s no looming threat on the horizon the characters can’t just walk away from and no mounting tension beyond the character drama due to the very stop and start nature of a tornado.
Very different from, say, a movie about a volcano that’s about to erupt, where there is a distinct moment we all know is coming where everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket.
So while there is ‘a big one’ at the end (come on, that doesn’t count as a spoiler, you already knew that) there’s no build up to it. Our characters chase tornadoes, find a few, and sometimes things go really wrong.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that the rising tension is held entirely by the characters rather than the environment.
So Kate is the good old trope of the genius who went through something awful and is now struggling to overcome their trauma to apply that genius yet again now that the call to adventure has showed up at the front door yet again.
The movie goes out of its way to show us that she knows her storms like nobody else, it’s only herself stopping her from finally completing the revolutionary experiment that ended in tragic failure four years earlier.
Her suspiciously fortunate friend who’s here getting her back in the saddle has his heart in the right place, but might need his motives interrogated.
Meanwhile that roguish, charismatic YouTuber reveals more of his tender philanthropic, good-ol-southern boy core the more layers of stubble, muscle and branded tee-shirts she peels off him…
God I hope I didn’t inspire any weird fanfics with that last line.
These character journeys of realisation and conflict between professional self interest and inherent morality are what forms the beating heart of Twisters. It’s simple, but that’s all it needs to be.
Acting and writing lets it down somewhat during the opening minutes of the film. We start with Kate’s first doomed expedition and I’m sorry to say but that first impression ain’t great. The actors are trying their best, but the material they are working with isn’t exactly Shakespeare.
The scene appears a bit like a commercial where a group of twenty-something acting hopefuls have to act like friends excited to be with each other for a few seconds before turning to the camera and presenting an ad for toothpaste.
It’s painfully obvious that something horrible is going to happen to all of them.
Fortunately things do become more hopeful as the film carries on and the performers are given more baggage to work with, as bizarre as that sounds.
Action is all go and all here.
The effects are particularly impressive, not a sentiment I really expected to have about any movie in 2024 but the true switch-your-brain-off moments when the convoy of storm chasers drives right into a raging tornado to accomplish whatever goal they have in mind were truly heart pumping. The action choreography was well put together and the violence was interspaced with the interpersonal moments in a good balance between cute character moments and witnessing mother nature remind us all who’s boss.
Overall, Twisters caught me off guard a little.
It wasn’t anything like high art, but there was more substance here than I was ready for and I left pleasantly surprised.
Bonus points for a satisfying ending.
Year: 2024
Rating: M15+
Running Time: 122 MIN
Genre: Action
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos
Production Amblin Entertainment, Universal Pictures
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures