The set pieces often impress but any hints of romance, drama and humour are too often lost in the eye of the storm.
Towards the end of this follow-up to director Jan de Bont’s 1996 hit, a writer reporting on storm-chasers wonders what kind of story he should be telling. The question is a pointed one, because Twisters never quite resolves what angle it wants to take. Elemental romance or meteorological thriller? Disaster movie or lament for real-world losses? Sequel or reboot? Though the pluralised title seems to augur maximalist thrills – Aliens being the obvious precedent – director Lee Isaac Chung’s serviceable summer spectacle frustrates because it never fully amplifies its lines of attack.
As films from Cliffhanger to Twister itself tend to, it begins with trauma. Student Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) leads a ragtag team on an experiment in Oklahoma to battle a tornado, firing nappy material up into the funnel to absorb moisture and thus disperse the cloud. But the mission goes wrong, and three of her friends die in the diaper-based dust-up.
Five years on, fellow survivor Javi (Anthony Ramos) approaches Kate in her calmer New York job. Having developed a means to measure twisters’ behaviour, he needs her to help determine their paths. When Kate returns to Oklahoma with Javi, they clash with a rootin’-tootin’ posse of reckless tornado-chasers, fronted by YouTube stud Tyler Owens (Glen Powell).
Might Kate and Tyler bond as he reveals hidden qualities? They might, indeed, though this low-sparks connection typifies the underfed writing in Mark L Smith’s script. It’s equally typical that, after five years away from “chasing”, Kate takes all of five minutes to forget her losses and join Javi’s operation. Lacking sparkle and character tension, the on-screen drama feels oddly muted.
The fun starts as Tornado Alley’s twisters rear up and the chasers get to work, giving Chung licence to deliver the expected sound and fury. His previous film, Minari (2020), offered a gentle strain of rustic Americana before climaxing in a fierce conflagration. Chung channels both ingredients into Twisters, showing a poetic feel for landscape then leaning into the elemental turmoil as the tornadoes whirl. There isn’t much to distinguish one twister from another here, sadly, but Chung does make their impact ragged and visceral, particularly when Kate and Tyler’s date at a rodeo takes a turn for the tempestuous.
The cast tend to be somewhat swept aside by contrast, though they perform solidly enough. Edgar-Jones and Powell are likeable leads, even if the dialogue between his tornado-wrangler and her twister-whisperer could have used some screwball-ish crackle. Harry Hadden-Paton is fun as a storm-scared British journalist reporting on Tyler’s antics, while Ramos, Sasha Lane and David Corenswet all impress.
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Maura Tierney draws a shorter straw as Kate’s mother, mobilised at the film’s midpoint to provide under-written quips while Kate and Tyler connect. The calm before bigger storms to follow, this perfunctory sequence speaks volumes about the film’s plot problems. Fitful character beats aside, the story merely hurtles between tornadoes, with only sketchy narrative tissue in between.
As the pressure builds over Oklahoma, ill winds blow for a climax that swaps Twister’s drive-in-set finale for a cinema-set stand-off with heavy weather. The reference to this local cinema’s ‘Monster Fest’ follows Chung’s tendency to characterise tornadoes as near-sentient beasts but it’s not a theme he develops with any fervour. And while Chung touches on a real-world theme of corporations benefitting fiscally from human tragedy, the real-world subtext of climate change is merely glanced at, too.
While Twister gamely embraced its popcorn pleasures and star power, the result here is a film that never quite locates a sense of purpose. Even as the spectacle of flattened locations fitfully impresses, any hints of romance, drama and humour are too often lost in the melee, levelled in the eye of the storm.
Twisters is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday 17th July 2024.
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