Twisters

UK Release Date. 17 July 2024
Certification. 12A
Running Time. 2 hours 2 mins
Director. Lee Isaac Chang
Cast. Daisy Edgar Jones, Daryl McCormack, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Maura Tierney.
Rating. 59%

Review.

Two years after the release of one of the most quintessential action films of the 1990s, Speed, the Dutch director Jan de Bont returned with Twister starring Helen Hunt, as Dr Jo Harding, a tornado-obsessed meteorologist and Bill Paxton as her estranged husband, Bill, who invented a Heath-Robinson storm warning device - the wonderfully named 'Dorothy.' 

While Twister was far from a cinematic masterpiece, I have to say I have a fair degree of fondness for the film. Preposterous yet engaging, Twister was a genuine rollercoaster of a ride that captured hearts and minds of the cinema-going public of the time. An ideal summer, Friday night, first date kind of film. Essentially, Twister is a gentle romantic comedy set in a world that is anything but benign.

Now, 28 years after the release of Twister comes Lee Isaac Chang's Twisters. A reboot? A sequel? Either way, Twisters touches ground with a remarkably familiar plot.

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate Carter, a meteorology-obsessed research student with an apparent sixth sense when it comes to tornados. She is pitted against Glen Powell, the self-proclaimed 'tornado wrangler' Tyler Owens, a YouTube sensation driven by likes and followers. Edgar-Jones delivers an unremarkable performance - her Oklahoma accent is inconsistent at best - Powell is well-suited to the role of the charming yet reckless storm-chasing cowboy even if, at times, his presence does feel superficial.

The science is once again pure science fiction. In this instance, if the tornado can be be filled with enough extra-absorbent polymers (the same chemicals used to make Pampers and Huggies, apparently), then the reaction will remove moisture from the vortex, and ultimately disarm the tornado. Twisters is a film that, too often, takes itself way too serious. The audience is told that the story takes place during "an unprecedented outbreak" of tornadoes, though the words 'climate change' are never uttered aloud during the two hours' run time, presumably for fear of losing a large segment of the US audience. 

Twisters is a change of pace for director Lee Isaac Chang. His previous film, the more delicate and cerebral immigrant drama, Minari, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival before going on to receive six Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. Chang's action sequences are adequate, but not quite spectacular enough for a film of this magnitude.

In fact, at several points, Twisters underwhelms. The film is nowhere near imaginative enough. But in other aspects, it's an unapologetic throwback to the summer blockbuster films of the 1990s, in the days before the Marvel Cinematic Universe.