Twisters

3 outta 5

Twisters is the few decades later sequel to 1996’s Twister that at least manages keep in the same tone of the original. There are specific beats ripped from there: interpersonal melodrama and flirting, an opening traumatic tornado to establish the main character’s fear of storms, competing storm chasers (one cool and indie the other stiff and corporate) and escalating twisters throughout. It certainly works in the same way as the first flick, and it is a nice throwback disaster movie era (as Twister itself in ’96 was already a throwback). It doesn’t add anything new to the series but if you want pretty people running into twisters, this will deliver.

Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) was a storm chaser trying to control the power of deadly tornadoes with her friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos). Unfortunately, one day it gets three of their friends killed and Kate retreats to a desk job, while Javi gets corporate sponsorships and to keep people aware of incoming tornadoes. In a particularly intense hurricane season, Javi goes to Kate for help, and she begrudgingly tags along with Javi and his crew. On the way they run into Tyler (Glen Powell) a guy who chases tornadoes and fame with his crew and a large YouTube following and personal merchandise. Kate thinks he’s a glory hound, but he may turn out to be smarter than the rock and country storm chaser persona he presents. Tyler can help Kate perfect her storm dissipating formula, surprisingly, they grow closer together as the tornadoes get deadlier.

In the first film, Bill Paxton’s character sneers at the storm chasing antagonist saying that the guy “Went and got a bunch of corporate sponsorships” and his storm chasing tech is very advanced compared to the rough and tumble handmade storm chaser heroes. In this film it is reversed as Kate joins up with Javi who is an independent businessman with corporate sponsors. Tyler is a lot of hooting, cowboy hats, riding in trucks and them live streaming shooting fireworks up into a tornado for YouTube views. Their handcrafted tornado science recalls the good guys from the first film, although Tyler and his crew start off as the antagonists. Now the corporate sponsorships are the good guys. There is a journalist following Tyler, Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton), he gets in one endearing moment when he is on Tyler’s YouTube stream and tries to engagingly say where he’s from in the U.K., and then afterwards he’s basically there to scream and vomit in terror as Tyler drives him around storms. Ramos as Javi the determined worker buddy is a contrast to Tyler’s rambunctiousness. Eventually, Javi realizes that corporate sponsorship is no match for Tyler’s crazy twister chasing.

Kate and Tyler’s love-hate relationship is a tonal carryover from the first film with the two leads. Tyler seems to be chasing storms for YouTube glory, but he reveals a softer, more intelligent side. The reason he’s selling all the merch is to give out free food and disaster relief to tornado victims. It is an easy and kind of cheap way to make him instantly switch over from annoyance to endearing for Kate. Then he takes Kate on a date to a rodeo which is supposed to make him relatable. Kate is also dealing with trauma from losing three of her friends at the start and doesn’t want anything to do with tornado chasing. Eventually Tyler convinces her to try again, which isn’t exactly a surprise. Even if the relationship is cliché, Edgar-Jones and Powell have decent chemistry.

There are no direct references to characters from Twister. The closest it gets is when Kate and her friends want to scan the tornado, they use a bucket that shoots out scanning drones, the “Dorthy” gadget from the first film. As her friends are trying to get it to work, they complain that the ‘90s technology is “ancient”. One of Kate’s friends is played by Kiernan Shipka who has quite an extensive acting resume so it is kind of shocking to see how crazy her exit is from the film. Maybe they wanted a high-profile actor at the start of the film to get sucked away to up the stakes. But the opening chaos is quite good and very intense, which is another thing cribbed from the original where the heroine has a traumatic experience with a twister that informs the rest of their lives. The finale has a giant tornado tearing through an oil refinery and bearing down upon the characters while Kate takes the truck out to the middle of the storm to dissipate it. The characters are hiding out in a movie theatre that gets torn apart which feels like a callback to the original when a twister tore apart a drive-in. This series seems to have a thing for causing chaos to places that show movies. Makes it seem interactive.

Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung who directed the Best Picture nominated Minari, that was a small character piece about family, and this is about giant tornadoes tearing up stuff. The character relationship stuff here isn’t very profound but it does make the viewer care a bit more when the twisters start ripping things apart. And when the twisters do start tearing lots of things apart, that is when Twisters gleefully embraces its disaster movie roots.