As a budding film geek, I loved 90s disaster movies. VHS tapes of
Independence Day,
Mars Attacks!, and
Armageddon captured my imagination with their mixture of epic destruction and patently (and, admittedly, more than a little naive) 90s optimism. The new film
Twisters harkens back to that era, an appropriate frame of reference given that its predecessor
Twister was a key part of the 90s disaster movie boom. Given that this Lee Isaac Chung directorial also features a soundtrack chock full of country music (a music genre I was obsessed with as a youngster) and many actors I adore (Katy O'Brian, what a legend!),
Twisters should've left me blown away.
Yet, no matter how many trucks revved up in the dirt or storms blew off the roofs of houses, Twisters often left me cold. Sometimes, coming back home isn't a flawless stroll down memory lane.
Mark L. Smith's Twisters script begins with a prologue following Oklahoma storm chaser Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) tracking down a big storm to test proposed technology that could stop a tornado. This mission goes awry and the massive tornado gulps up her dear friends and lover. Five years later, she works as a meteorologist in bustling New York City. She's left that old life behind until best friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) reaches out to her with a proposition. Cooper's wits are needed back home in the service of technology that, in theory, could help map out tornadoes and save future lives. No more dear friends or relatives would have to die. Cooper relents and comes back to the place she left behind, which is now dominated by cocky YouTube storm chasers like Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his motley crew of redneck thrill-seekers.
With historically bad tornados bearing down on Oklahoma, the science project that spurred Cooper's fateful traumatic day is about to become more important than ever. Owens and Cooper couldn't hate each other more if they tried. However, the time has come to put aside differences, evade those storms, and confront long-simmering fears.
Typically, when an indie movie veteran transitions to blockbuster filmmaking, their fingerprints are most evident on the movie's intimate sequences. Comedy movie veteran Elizabeth Banks, for example, showed solid chops executing visual gags in
Charlie's Angels. However, she seemed lost handling generic action sequences. Jon Watts, meanwhile, channeled his 2015 directorial effort
Cop Car in a
deeply suspenseful automobile ride in
Spider-Man: Homecoming, while the big action set-pieces didn't resonate with his personality. Chung's work on
Twisters is a rare exception to that rule. Though the tornado-heavy sequences don't echo the man's
Minari filmmaking, they display plenty of confidence and visual precision. There's a specificity to the execution of massive stormy chaos that's commendable for an artist relatively new to feature-length tentpoles (though Chung did cut his teeth on two different
Star Wars shows).
Just look at an early scene where Owens takes two companions (including an out-of-his-depth British reporter) into a tornado in his heavily modified pickup truck. This set piece's exciting nature comes from how well-paced it is. There's a thrilling sense of theatricality in Chung's filmmaking and Terilyn A. Shropshire's editing, both providing perfect timing in unveiling each neat trick this automobile can pull off. It all provides a very finely-tuned build-up culminating in a fun reveal of drills that keep the truck latched to the ground no matter how windy it gets is a delightful finisher to this sequence. Later on, Chung captures Cooper, Owens, and some poor civilians trying to evade a tornado in an emptied hotel pool largely in a lengthy single-take. This visual decision makes the scenario's tension suffocatingly palpable while the backdrop for the entire situation is deeply creative. When handling VFX-heavy disaster movie mayhem, Chung shows a welcome flair for both bombast and imagination. Needless to say, this Minari veteran is no Josh Trank or Stephen Gaghan in registering as out-of-his-depth with blockbuster filmmaking.
Also, bonus points to Smith's screenplay for eschewing the legacy sequel mold for
Twisters. A handful of references (like naming storm-chasing devices "Dorothy") exist, but the proceedings don't grind to a halt to contort the plot into a "surprise"
Twister sequel. Nobody here is a secret descendent of the original film's characters, nor are random
Twister props suddenly turned into sacred MacGuffin's.
Twisters is just another tornado-centric blockbuster taking place in Oklahoma. Even its big set pieces creatively lean into backdrops that wouldn't have been possible back in 1996, like a tornado descending on a wind turbine field. Sink or swim,
Twisters is out to establish its own identity that doesn't require viewership of that original 1990s blockbuster. What a deeply admirable trait in a time when superhero movies pause their stories
to pay tribute to 90s superhero films that never even got made.
Unfortunately, in between those tornado-heavy scenes are a lot of dreary dialogue-heavy sequences that are borderline insufferable. Classic disaster movies weren't known for housing lines that would make Truman Capote or Billy Wilder proud. However, they also tended to have expansive ensemble casts that didn't leave one thinly sketched character on-screen for long. Twisters, meanwhile, focuses almost exclusively on the flirtatious dynamic between Cooper and Owens. Smith's script aims to make their rapport the His Girl Friday of disaster movie romances. He doesn't come close to those cinematic aspirations. Their dialogue is too full of predictable sarcastic banter and, later, verbose discussions about the inner machinations of tornados. Twisters best assets are its grand visual swings, not pretty people chattering like network TV scientists.
This central character dynamic would also work better if Owens wasn't so often insufferable. Constantly chanting "city girl" to Owens and hootin' & hollerin' at everything in sight, Smith and Chung go way overboard on making the character an aggressive Southern "bro". He resonates as a caricature immediately and, when it's time for him to show depth, Owens is flattened out into a generically-rendered figure shouting at CG storms. He's either got too much personality or none at all! Meanwhile, all the tech in his car (not to mention his status as a semi-famous YouTuber) gives Owens an extra irritating edge. Smith's script never grapples with this, but this guy's wealthy to afford all this tech. He's a rich guy passing himself off as "a good o'l country boy", like he's the target of
Bo Burnham's modern country music parody.
That level of financial security compounds the already insufferable nature of his character. It's also a quality especially hindering the eventual bitterness Owens feels towards Cooper and Javi's land-owner employers. Owens is meant to be a champion for "the little guy", but thanks to how financially well-off he is, it just feels like two kinds of rich folks hashing it out ("whoever wins, we lose!"). The vagueness over the machinations and intent of those land-owner employers (presumably so the script doesn't involve corrupt actions Twisters financier Comcast is doing in real life) only further hampers this plot detail. Powell's leading man charms from Set It Up and Hit Man can't salvage a character this poorly written. Nor can he resuscitate a fictional figure that goes directly against how often past disaster movies explicitly chronicled working-class figures.
The rest of the cast delivers decent work, even if Daisy Edgar-Jones has no real dimensions to play with as Kate Cooper. Lively bursts of energy from Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, and Katy O'Brian make them the film's MVPs by default! In another shocking twist on my pre-viewing expectations, composer Benjamin Wallfish also rounds up some fine compositions for the proceedings. Wallfish slept-walked through The Flash last year, but he's got some rousing banjos and stirring guitars ready to go for the Twisters score. His orchestral accompaniments complement the on-screen action and feel distinctly evocative of the Oklahoma setting. As for the assorted country tunes on the soundtrack, they're mostly an embarrassing waste of good singers. Tanner Adell, for instance, has an extremely lovely voice, but her ditty "Too Easy" is way too evocative of misguided 2010s "girlboss" tunes "God Made Girls". She and the other singers here deserved better than these disposably-written tracks.
When
Twisters revs up the spectacle, it's a perfectly cromulent time at the movies. I'm sure those checking it out in IMAX will get their money's worth and if these characters register as enjoyable to you, you'll be happier than a pig in a slop. However,
Twisters desperately needed less expository dialogue and a little more melodrama and fun. Who comes to a 90s disaster movie pastiche for so much conversation? If nothing else, it couldn't have hurt to improve the country rock soundtrack (maybe Gary Allan should've drummed up an original ditty?) At least Lee Isaac Chung and company can hold their head high that, in the pantheon of disaster movies,
Twisters doesn't have a scene as embarrassing as
Armageddon's erotic animal crackers sequence.