Twisters (2024) – Review

Quick thoughts – Grade – B- – Director Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters provides plenty of action and spectacle, but it isn’t propulsive enough to be a memorable summer blockbuster. 

Aside from the incredible VFX and sound design, Twister (1996) worked because of the simplicity of the meat-and-potatoes plot that put its characters directly in front of the finger of God (AKA giant tornadoes). All of the characters knew each other, and the introduction of Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz) works because she was new to the tornado chasing world which allowed characters to dump expository dialogue on her while they drove towards impending danger. The familiarity of the characters, coupled with a slimy villain played by Cary Elwes, created a simple narrative that still feels refreshingly propulsive. With Twisters (2024), there are too many elements, characters, or issues that need to be dealt with or overcome. I’d happily watch Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Katy M. O’Brian, Sasha Lane, Anthony Ramos, Brand Perea, and Tunde Adebimpe battle tornadoes, but all the additional elements slow everything down. 

Twisters focuses on an ambitious tornado chaser named Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who gets coerced back into tornado chasing after a five-year hiatus caused by a tragic incident that saw her tornado chasing team get blown away by a gigantic twister. She’s called back into action by Javi (Anthony Ramos), the other survivor of the incident who now owns a company with some expensive tornado tracking technology that could save many lives. Once in Oklahoma, she meets Javi’s well-funded crew (they all have matching polos – which isn’t a good thing in this world), and a rival tornado chasing crew led by Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a truck driving maniac who loves driving into the middle of tornadoes so he can set off fireworks in their cone. Together, they navigate a rough tornado season that leads to a burgeoning romance and a gigantic tornado that hates movie theaters. On the surface this all sounds great, but toss in corporate greed, family issues, farmhouse flirting, t-shirt jokes, a friendly journalist, and an entire subplot about people from Arkansas not being dummies (it turns out that Tyler and his crew are great people), and you have a little too much plot.

Originally planned to film in Atlanta, Isaac Chung (watch Minari now)  convinced the studio to film in Oklahoma and it was a smart idea (it did force him to have a smaller budget and less shooting days though). The wide open landscapes provide a welcome dose of on-location work that works well with the VFX tornadoes that pummel everything in their way. There are some fun set pieces that involve Owens’ tornado-rigged Dodge Ram that can screw itself into the ground to prevent it from being tossed into the air, and the movie hits on all cylinders whenever Glen Powell is on screen. Whenever Owen and his team (and his Dodge Ram) are visible the movie feels alive and it makes me wish that writer Mark L. Smith leaned into the sillier aspects of maniacs who chase tornadoes into open fields so they can unleash fireworks inside them. It’s an interesting idea to focus on tornado-related trauma, but it slows down the summer blockbuster and makes it less enjoyable than its predecessor.