Movie Review: ‘Twisters’

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Harry Hadden-Paton, David Corenswet

Plot: Kate Cooper is an ambitious young meteorologist whose career and life are thrown off track by a tragic event in the field that lost her several close friends. Years later she’s brought back into the storm-chasing business by another survivor who is in competition with a cowboy YouTuber with a dangerous streak.

Review: Here’s a sequel I never expected to be reviewing, especially considering that I last watched the original 1996 Twister when it was a new release and I was partway through school, developing an interest in cinema. Many years later, in which I finished school, and higher academic studies, and then teach film for almost two decades, and have a child the age I was when I saw the first one, we get a tangentially linked follow-up. It may feel like it’s come out of nowhere, but new audiences won’t know what a massive blockbuster Twister was. I distinctly remember a small crowd of people waiting in the local Blockbuster for a copy to be returned so they could snatch it up. It was massive in a way that films not based on comics, games or books rarely are in this day and age.

When we saw that Twisters is only tangentially related, we mean connected with only the thinnest of sinews. In the first scene, they’re using the ‘Dorothy’ data mapping system developed in that film and that’s it. Our main is Kate (Edgar-Jones), who is testing her ambitious plan to ‘kill’ tornadoes by releasing some…science stuff (sorry, that’s on me, I don’t remember the chemical names). Along for the ride is Javi (Ramos) and a couple of obvious Red Shirts needed to motivate Kate’s character moving forward. Jump ahead and Javi is has built a business chasing and mapping tornadoes with the hope of preventing damage to towns and homes. Javi recruits Kate, leaning on their mission statement of saving lives, to utilise her uncanny ability to predict tornado behaviour.

Now back in the field and confronting her demons, Kate and Javi’s slick operation immediately butts heads with Tyler Owens (Powell). This social media yahoo and his ragtag crew are blasting music, selling merch and launching fireworks, setting them up as irresponsible thrill-seekers. As the movie goes on, Kate begins to question the motives of her own team compared to that of Tyler’s, with the two building up a mutual respect that shakes her loyalties. All of this story business is spaced out between one spectacular set-piece after another featuring tornadoes, twin tornadoes, fire-filled tornadoes and more. Plenty of flying machinery, people getting sucked out of doorways and some whacky farm animals.

There’s a very basic script going on here, almost a find-and-replace of the original. A girl is traumatised by weather, it creates a passion and she has to reconnect with figures from her past to remember who she really is. If you start looking closely you’ll find plenty to complain about, such as the discussions of funding and grants being pushed aside when the characters need to buy heavy duty equipment and dozens of barrels of chemicals for the finale, but if you’re looking for nitpicks then you’re not approaching this the right way. The charismatic Hollywood looking cast are going to drive through a bunch of tornadoes while the music pumps and the editing goes wild. In terms of building up the tension and escalating the action, the film is solid. In spite of the silliness of it all, there are plenty of each-of-the-seat moments

If you want a fun, wild night out, this is a great pick. Doubly so if you’re nostalgic for the bygone era of mass destruction cinema. It doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything new or different, but not everything has to.

Now on a final note, as the keeper of a flock of demented backyard chickens, that chook did NOT look like it had just been through a tornado. So clean and sleek looking! My chooks looked more ruffled by a light breeze! Twisters is presenting an unrealistic beauty standard for chickens and I won’t stand for it.

Rating: SEVEN out of TEN