TWISTERS (2024) - Movie Review

Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Kiernan Shipka
Genre: Mark L. Smith
Writer: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Runtime: 122 min
Rated: PG-13 for intense action and peril, some language and injury images
Buy This Movie: Blu-ray (Amazon), DVD (Amazon), 4K Ultra HD (Amazon), Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

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Synopsis:

Twisters brings back the blockbuster disaster epic with a whirlwind of heart-stopping action and exhilarating thrills. Ever since a devastating tornado encounter, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) gave up chasing storms across the Oklahoma prairie to safely study them on screens in New York City. Lured back to the field by her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) and a once-in-a-lifetime scientific opportunity, Kate crosses paths with Tyler (Glen Powell), a charming daredevil and self-proclaimed tornado wrangler whose thirst for tornado-tracking adventures made him a social media sensation. As storm season intensifies with terrifying phenomena unlike anything seen before, Kate and Tyler realize they may need to work together if they are to have any chance of taming, and surviving, an unprecedented outbreak of destructive tornados.

Review:

Well, it took them almost 30 years, but here it is, another sequel nobody asked for. To be fair, sequel isn't the right word to describe "Twisters". There are no ties to characters and events from the first film apart from briefly featuring a contraption very similar to the one the storm chasers in the original were trying to send up a tornado. The title and the film's focus on deadly natural phenomena are the only connections to the original 1996 disaster thriller. It's a silly title too. I mean, Alien/Aliens, Predator/Predators hinted at the fact that the first films had one creature, while the sequels had more than one. With Twister/Twisters it makes no sense, because both films have more than one tornado. What gives ?

The plot ups the ante from learning more about tornados in order to create better early warning systems in the original film, to literally killing them in the sequel. It sure sounds like a cool idea in theory, but the execution is so drawn out and convoluted. "Twister" started out with a very basic premise, and almost immediately went full-throttle, barely slowing down for a few quiet moments. It was almost a non-stop rollercoaster ride that blew past most of its narrative shortcomings with big set pieces, a great cast and snappy dialogue. "Twisters" starts out with a bang, slows down to a crawl, then picks up the pace again in short bursts followed by more tedium and an underwhelming finale. The movie wastes way too much time setting up a story that isn't all that great to begin with.

Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar nominated director of "Minari", seemed an unusual choice for an effects-ladden blockbuster, but as it turns out, not a bad one. Chung leans towards a more humanistic angle and serves up a bigger slice of Americana, which is a nice touch, while the obligatory romantic subplot between Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell's protagonists is subtler and mostly lingers in the background. On the other hand, Edgar-Jones and Powell don't really have the same chemistry that Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt had, they're not very compelling leads, and at times Edgar-Jones' performance feels off. Which brings me to what a disappointment the rest of the cast is, with an array of generic supporting characters that made me miss the tightly knit group of storm chasers from the first film and their fun banter.

Visually, it's pretty decent, but falls just short of exciting. For a two-hour movie it's pretty light on action, with extreme weather episodes spread thinly throughout. Obviously, the technology has evolved enough to allow better renderings of the terrifying twisters, yet the editing constantly cuts away from the grandiosity of the natural behemoths, never letting us fully take in the breathtaking majesty of Mother Nature gone wild. There are a couple of fun disaster sequences, but I can't say that anything in "Twisters" surprised me or dropped my jaw. If anything, it reminded me of things Roland Emmerich already did in the 20-year-old global warming disaster epic "The Day After Tomorrow". The visual effects also look weightless and cartoonish most of the time, bringing me to the sad realization that I've seen more ferocious, intense and devastating storms in real-life footage than in this movie. The sound design is also surprisingly flat, lacking the extra oomph that broke surround speakers in theaters worldwide in 1996.

Somehow the 30-year-old original still towers above this sequel/reboot in terms of action, awe-inspiring technical prowess, cast, and sharper writing. "Twister" remains a masterclass in blockbuster filmmaking. "Twisters" is not a terrible sequel, but it's disappointingly mediocre, bland and unnecessary.

SCORE: 6/10