‘Twisters’ Review – Glen Powell Sequel Captures the Charm and Terror of the Original

At its core, any good disaster movie is a horror movie. Deadly, nigh-incomprehensible events happen, ones larger than any of us. There’s a reason that the insurance term for a catastrophe outside human control is an ‘act of God’: disasters from geological or weather phenomena like earthquakes, floods, or tornadoes feel like the wrath of an angry deity. The original Twister, Jan de Bont‘s 1996 disaster romp about a set of storm chasers, is clearly designed to evoke the storm’s horrors. From moment one we see a tornado rampage through the family home of a young Jo Harding (Helen Hunt as an adult, Alexa Vega as Young Jo), destroying her life when it violently sucks her father into the sky while accompanied by horror movie lighting, music, and inhuman sound effects. Twisters, its new sequel from director Lee Isaac Chung, captures that reverence, awe, and terror, creating a film that asks us to face our fears and fight for our communities.

The new disaster picture echoes many themes of the 1996 original, like the conflicts between corporate interests and more altruistic motives, or our communities’ perseverance against the unkind elements. Tornadoes are to be feared and respected, but are also a draw for adrenaline-junkie thrill-seekers. It’s a film full of characters who overcome fear to fight monsters, only this time they’re fighting breezy acts of God instead of dragons, werewolves, or krakens. Towards that end, Twistersboasts strong visuals, memorable scenes, and impressive scale alongside stellar character work from an exceptionally talented and charismatic cast. It’s an impactful and well-paced narrative, though there are some missteps and subtle character inconsistencies that dampen its highest potential. Nonetheless, at its core, Twisters is an emotional, charismatic thrill ride that showcases both the threat’s scale and our bravery in the face of it, backed by an excellent set of central performances.

What is ‘Twisters’ About?

Before the events of Twisters, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a tornado chaser with dreams of finding a simple technological means of ‘taming’ tornadoes. Tragedy strikes after a test run with her friends goes awry, causing Kate to abandon the idea entirely. Five years later, Javi (Anthony Ramos), a friend from those early days, reaches out to pull her into his new business, a company using cutting-edge military scanning tech to map tornadoes. While chasing a tornado to test the tech in action, the pair and their team run into Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and crew, an Arkansas-based “Tornado Wrangler” known for online followers and brazen antics. As a growing wave of tornadoes descends on Kate’s home state of Oklahoma, a harrowing tornado encounter brings Kate and Tyler closer together. They return to her family farm, unearthing her old tornado-taming dreams, and with a dangerous wave of storms closing in, it’s a race to see if they can get an accurate model and a working prototype before a dangerous, growing tornado ravages a nearby town.

Disaster movies themselves are nearly 100 years old, but they reflect some of the earliest themes and literature in human history. As a species, humanity has always been capable of great brilliance and yet remains uniquely vulnerable: compared to some of nature’s best, we can’t swim, attack, defend, or withstand harsh climates all that well. These vulnerabilities have fueled thousands of years of stories following humanity versus the elements, and disaster films give a lens into these dangers at their most apocalyptic (or nearly so). Twisters sets itself in an interesting fictional trajectory here, moving beyond merely highlighting our vulnerabilities to focusing on our species’ most impressive virtues: our capacities to invent and band together. It’s a film that treats tornadoes less as gods and more like monsters. Unless you’re Gorr the God-Butcher or Kratos, a god is hard for a mortal to kill. A monster, however, can be vulnerable, and Twisters is an engaging showcase of humanity’s will to do just that.

‘Twisters’ Is a Thrilling Showcase of Resilient Humanity Backed by Strong, Charismatic Performances

Twisters, like the original, wastes no time in establishing that tornadoes are awe-inspiring, devastating forces of nature. The harrowing opening is a shocker, and what occurs easily explains why Kate stopped chasing, moved to New York, and left it all behind. The film is at its best in moments like these, showcasing the scale and power of these phenomena. It’s easy to be blasé about oft-repeated elements of blockbusters (please never have another city destroyed by a ‘beam weapon from space’) but Twisters capably captures the horror of people being ripped into the sky, as though plucked from the Earth by an angry god while shrapnel rains down. Tornadoes here are treated with reverence, as when Tyler explains tornadoes as “a mix of everything we know, part science, part religion… nature’s masterpiece.”

Just as there’s a strong focus on tornadoes’ terror-inducing, awe-inspiring power, the film also smartly stops to let characters (and the audience) see the devastating aftermath: shredded homes, missing families, trauma, terror. It’s a strong balance of scale and personal connection, each enhancing audiences’ perception of the other to experience the weight of the disaster via its most exceedingly personal effects.

Daisy Edgar-Jones is excellent as Kate, giving a layered performance that at various times requires charm, intelligence, relevant badassery and a display of gut-wrenching terror. Kate’s given almost a sixth sense for tornadoes, an intuitive gift for finding and predicting their behavior that echos well the first film’s consistent exploration of high-tech versus instinctual approaches to tornado hunting.

Powell Continues to Impress in ‘Twisters’

She has strong chemistry with Glen Powell, who gives Tyler heart and intelligence behind the character’s performative bravado. Powell here shows he can add more layers still behind his movie star charm (a fact that fans of Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some!! already knew), and it’s Edgar-Jones’ emotional complexity that ultimately carries the day. Anthony Ramos is characteristically good as Javi, a character who funnels tragic loss into a complex future, trying to balance profit against making a difference. The remaining cast is full of charismatic young talent (David Corenswet, Katy O’Brian, Sasha Lane, too many to list), who may sometimes be slightly underutilized, but each more than hold their own in a film that gives most at least a little time apiece to shine.

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Twisters’ biggest vice is a woeful misuse of Ramos’ Javi in a way that suggests they didn’t quite know how to make the character fit (at least in this iteration). In the pursuit of taming tornadoes, Kate, Javi, and Tyler each bring something important to the equation, and Javi’s importance is established from moment one as a connection to Kate’s past who gets her back home and into the tornado discovery business. Their history notwithstanding, he’s quickly sidelined once Tyler’s introduced. Javi’s corporate ties (and their objectives) are challenged while Tyler’s secret hero credentials are established, casually severing the former’s role at the film’s center.

Moreover, neither Javi’s seemingly sincere ignorance of those objectives nor the path he takes while wrestling with that tension make full sense given what else audiences know of the character as established prior. Essentially, he’s set up as a co-protagonist and then half-heartedly sidelined as a pseudo-antagonist when someone with their face on a t-shirt comes along. All characters get wrapped into a fairly satisfying conclusion for each, but it’s hard not to feel like Javi had greater importance in an earlier draft before getting pulled from the narrative like so many barn boards against an F5. It’s a set of elements (incidentally important to major plot beats) that feel haphazardly handled when weighed against a script that’s otherwise close to excellent.

Another issue with the film’s scripting is the intentional choice to sidestep overt discussion of climate change in a film that clearly foregrounds its effects—growing waves of ever more dangerous tornadoes. Blockbuster features typically aren’t expected to comment on the larger issues of the day, sure, but Twisters is a film explicitly dealing with its fallout, following protagonists who share legitimate meteorological backgrounds. It would likely come up. It doesn’t destroy the experience of watching the film, but much like Alex Garland’s Civil War, it reads at times like a film trying to walk away with the vague appearance of something to say, but without the bravery to say it. Certainly there are financial considerations at play, given that the film lovingly centers rural communities and likely hopes to find traction there, but this crowdpleasing film is one of the best opportunities to organically discuss a very real-world crisis that we’ve had in years. It’s a discussion these characters would have, so it’s frustrating to see a film so close to making a brave, intelligent, cinematically consistent choice, and then falling over itself to avoid it.

Still, as a whole, Twisters‘ script (written by Mark L. Smith from a story by Joseph Kosinski) boasts an enjoyable narrative with tight pacing, solid tension, and emotional moments that land. Echoing the disaster-pic-as-horror-movie tone of Twister, Twisters smartly approaches tornadoes with reverence, as though the weather phenomena were stalking creatures. When Javi pitches his organization and its work to Kate, he emphasizes that the growing waves of tornadoes are heading toward their mutual communities in Oklahoma. Javi tells her the tornadoes are “comin’ after the people we love,” as though they’re hunting from a pre-ordained campaign of revenge. These themes come into play later as well, when a tornado interrupts a small town’s screening of the 1931 James Whale classic, Frankenstein.

It’s yet another opportunity to test tornado fighting technology, as tornadoes appropriately arrive to exhortations of “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Frankenstein is a particularly strong choice here in context, contrasting a film where science creates a monster against a movie where science can hopefully destroy one. The film packs a stunner of an intro, high stakes, charismatic characters, and memorable set-pieces intended for massive screens, making for a satisfying follow-up to the original.

Strong Scale and Tension Beside Charismatic Performances Make ‘Twisters’ A Breezy Success

1996 was an excellent time for a large-scale disaster film, from the box office success of the original Twister to the franchise-sparking alien invasion classic Independence Day. It would be over a decade until Iron Man kicked off the increasingly cosmic and multiversal MCU, with CGI advances making city-destroying or world-ending threats common, almost casual affairs in the cinematic landscape. It’s a challenging environment for a disaster film to stand out from the pack, but Twisters‘ engaging narrative, strong performances, impressive sense of scale, and attention to the interpersonal costs of these disasters create a properly memorable picture. Its approach to the disaster picture itself also boasts conceptual freshness, from ‘let’s survive the crisis’ to ‘let’s wage war against it,’ a call for protagonists to be refreshingly active and interestingly creative.

As a whole, Twisters works. Once again, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell prove they can anchor a thrilling tale, grounding a film that has scale and high stakes. Lee Isaac Chung’s direction is inspired and the script itself is well-paced, intelligent, and full of memorable moments, alongside a strong showcase and development of themes that connect with the original film. Unfortunately, it also struggles to balance certain plot lines and find satisfying integration of the beats of one particularly important character, and a few of the supporting players are a little underused. On balance, Twisters is nonetheless a thrilling crowd-pleaser that takes the disaster picture in exciting, novel directions, and an excellent showcase of talent across the board.

REVIEW

Twisters

Twisters is a thrilling disaster film with an impressive sense of scale, strong performances, and interesting concepts, though certain plotlines, story pivots, and important character arcs need more thoughtful and honed development.

Pros

• Lee Isaac Chung has a strong eye for both impressive visuals and interpersonal drama, creating a moving, thrilling journey from a strong script.
• Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell showcase great range and star power, alongside strong chemistry.
• The film has a smart, unique approach to the disaster picture, and uses these themes and ideas well.

Cons

• Certain plot pivots, character developments, and small but relevant structural elements need honing.

Twisters is available to stream on VOD in the U.S. starting August 13.

WATCH ON VOD