Film review: Twisters is a tornado tale right up my alley

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The forecast for Twisters was not good.

As a half-sequel, half-reboot of a largely forgotten mid-’90s post-production-adventure-drama – the kind you went to see mostly for the special effects, partly for the charms of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt – it seemed destined to join the likes of Jurassic World or Independence Day: Resurgence, long-after follow-ups that no one was asking for, and that struggled to compete with their progenitors.

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But sometimes lightning does strike twice. Look at Top Gun: Maverick, Mad Max: Fury Road or even Blade Runner 2049. And then go see Twisters, which mixes the charms of the original – rival teams of tornado chasers with a little comedy and romance on the side – and adds just enough novelty to keep you glued to your seat, before blowing you out of it.

Let’s start with the protagonists. In the 1996 original – and in what seemed like a twist in those antediluvian times – Paxton was the sensitive one, a tempest empath who could let dirt sift through his fingers and then predict the weather, while Hunt was the scientist with all the fancy new gadgets.

Twisters twists that the other way. Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) is Kate, an extreme-weather specialist with tragic tornado backstory she shares with Javi (Anthony Ramos). But this time she’s the cyclone-clairvoyant, while he’s the one using phased array radar to tease out meteorological mysteries. He’s also been carrying a touch for her for years, but given the line of work they’re in, it keeps getting blown out.

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And then we have the rival tornado chaser. In the original Twister, Paxton and Hunt led a ragtag team of misfits, while their nemeses, led by Cary Elwes, had matching uniforms and black vans, like a government hit squad. Twisters flips that too – Kate and Javi have logos and corporate sponsorship, while rival Tyler Owens uses jerry-rigged equipment, funded by T-shirt sales and YouTube clicks.

Tyler is played by Glen Powell, rivalling the on-screen weather as the movie’s greatest force of nature. This is possibly the only human alive who could go through an EF5 tornado and come out the other side looking somehow even more handsome. He’s going to give windblown a good name. Over the last few months he’s been burning up screens opposite Sidney Sweeney (Anyone But You) and Adria Arjona (Hit Man), and he does not disappoint here.

In fact, very little about the movie fails to connect. The score, by Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner 2049, The Invisible Man) is backed up by a selection of country/western tunes including new numbers by Tanner Adell (Too Easy) and Luke Combs (Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma) and a rip-roaring cover of the classic Ghost Riders in the Sky.

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The director, Lee Isaac Chung, made the Oscar-nominated and relatively low-budget Minari in 2020, and he brings a deft hand to this tale, never forgetting that no matter how cool the funnel clouds may appear, we’ll always be more interested in the hearts of people than of the storms they weather.

Likewise the screenplay, by Joseph Kosinski and Mark L. Smith, knows how to deliver information and motivation just when we need it, including for the whirlwinds themselves, which at times seem hell-bent on revenge. It also gives us Harry Hadden-Paton as a British journalist, providing comic relief and asking the tough questions like: Can you please explain how tornadoes work?

And you want callbacks? There are a few little touches that only someone who just rewatched Twister 24 hours earlier (ahem) would likely notice. But there’s a lovely thematic parallel at play too. You may recall that in the original movie, a vortex touches down at a drive-in that is showing The Shining. Well, this time the tornado attacks a small-town movie house, in the midst of a screening of 1931’s Frankenstein.

In neither case does the cinema escape unscathed. But the message is clear. Whether you’re looking to get away from everyday troubles or real-life extreme weather – heat waves, floods, what-have-you – the movies have got you covered. It’s as true today as it was in 1996. Though, to quote another fantastic sort-of sequel, Young Frankenstein: The rates have gone up.

Twisters opens July 19 in cinemas.

4 stars out of 5

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