Twisters Nails The Storm Chasing But Its Human Drama Leaves Something To Be Desired

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.

In Laman's Terms: Longlegs Exemplifies Why Theatrical Releases Matter

If I told you about an odd moment or image in a Netflix Original Movie, you'd have no trouble verifying what I was talking about. After all, if a feature film premieres on digital home media platforms (whether it's on Netflix or premium video-on-demand), it can immediately be spliced up into gifs or memes. Screenshots and clips can be taken out of context instantaneously for the world to see. Just Google "A Family Affair weird grocery store scene" or any viral moment from 365 Days, it's there for you. This phenomenon was especially apparent back in 2021, when major legacy movie studios dropped several significant theatrical movies simultaneously on streaming. Two or three-minute snippets from Black Widow or The Matrix Resurrections spread like wildfire across Twitter as punchlines for tweets.

Now, let's compare this to if I told you about something strange in a theatrical movie, like, say, the recent surprise smash hit Longlegs. That movie has concealed in its marketing what Nicolas Cage as the serial killer Longlegs looks like. The Neon promotional team has kept a slew of additional key plot points and disturbing imagery hidden away from the ambiguous but striking marketing campaign for this Osgood Perkins motion picture. If I told you about something especially strange Cage did in Longlegs or a particularly eerie image from the movie, you couldn't just find it on Google. You'd have to take the time to buy a ticket, head out to the movie theater, and watch the entire motion picture. With that experience, you'd finally understand what I was talking about..but you'd also have to watch the whole movie.

Meanwhile, removing immediately available visual aids adds something extra fun and specific to the experience of Longlegs viewers trying to tell their friends about key images or acting flourishes from the feature. There is no officially released still of Cage as Longlegs I could point to in explaining to my friends "this is what he looks like." I'll have to describe it myself, which undoubtedly will be a vastly different description than how another viewer would describe this malicious figure's appearance. This makes talking about Longlegs extra idiosyncratic from person to person. It also adds a fun campfire story quality to discussing the production. You're reporting to another soul who's maybe never even heard of Longlegs all kinds of freaky materials and physical appearances contained within this one film. It's like some teenager regaling their friends around a fire about a beast they SWEAR they saw in the local forest. All you have to go on is the words of the narrator and the ominous reality that we truly never know what lies in wait in the darkness.

Eventually (probably by mid-August), Longlegs will come to PVOD. Then images from the feature, including 4K screengrabs of Cage as Longlegs, will populate social media. I can immediately think of at least two 10-second clips from Longlegs guaranteed to become go-to reaction memes. Ted Sarandos and other Netflix higher-ups may scoff at this reality in between licking the boots of transphobes and podcast hosts spreading misinformation about AIDS. "Why even put these things in theaters if they'll one day be available in your home?" they'll scorn after engaging in financial practices making it impossible for directors to make a living.

However, the specialness and experiences of theatrical exhibition live on long after a movie's big-screen run has concluded. Long after The Gray Man and The Tomorrow War have been forgotten, people still talk about The Blair Witch Project and its crafty marketing. The Barbenheimer phenomenon of last year will live on eternal as a testament to the joys of theatrical moviegoing and bonding with friends over cinema. Those lines of people that went for blocks and blocks for The Exorcist, that's still legendary. The countless stories attached to prime theatrical experiences help solidify as movies in the popular consciousness. They're not just another tile on your streaming platform's home screen. They're something you bonded with other people at or a motion picture that you had so much fun talking about with another person.

Longlegs would've vanished quickly into the streaming algorithm ether if it had debuted on streaming. High-quality yet obscure horror films like His House can attest to that reality. Not every movie that goes to the big screen becomes a smash hit. But if you want a movie that takes off like a surprising rocket like Longlegs...it has to go to theaters. Believe it or not, there are a few reasons why this mold for experiencing cinema has endured for over a century. 

Longlegs Is A Cinematic Nightmare Well Worth Experiencing

Longlegs begins with bright white snow. It's a winter morning and a young girl has gone out to play in the frigid weather. This incredibly unnerving Osgood Perkins directorial effort is an extremely bleak exercise. However, unlike other horror movie attempts at "darkness", Perkins doesn't suffocate every image in minimal light and shaky-cam. Instead, Longlegs ingratiates viewers to its uniquely ominous vibes all that snow on the ground and reasonably bright lighting. Even here, evil emerges. That young girl's time outside is upended by the arrival of a mysterious adult man. The on-screen color palette and lighting suggest it's just a normal winter day. It's not. 

Unspeakable creepiness lurks in every corner of Longlegs. Clean-cut suburban neighborhoods are backdrops to slaughter. A hardware store can house a deeply unnerving customer/cashier interaction. Even the inside of one's car, a place other bleak horror films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre depicted as a safe haven from serial killers, is here often a place for disturbing proclamations of mental anguish.

After that snowy prologue, the script by Perkins moves forward to the 1990s. Here, FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is assigned a case in Oregon that's confounded this agency. A man known as the Longlegs killer (Nicolas Cage) has been responsible for several slayings over the last few decades. Problem is, save for cryptic letters he's sent after the killings, there's no evidence to tie him to these gruesome events. Where is the evidence for forced entry or accomplices? It's all so confounding. Harker, with her unusual gift for uncovering killers, could be the key to solving this crime spree. As she dives deeper into the case, more bizarre elements pile up. Is there a method to this madness? More pressingly, is there is, can that method be halted before more die at the hands of Longlegs?

Speaking of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (my pick for one of the scariest movies ever made), Longlegs reminded me of that Tobe Hooper feature (as well as David Lynch's Lost Highway) in being a rare horror movie that truly captured what it feels like to experience a nightmare. Other ultra-dark horror movies, like your typical Saw installment, are too "grounded" to truly emulate the inexplicable nature of a nightmare. Perkins, meanwhile, unabashedly embraces the absurd in this feature. Cage's Longlegs is prone to singing when intimidating people, while folks Harker is interrogating will just say the most grisly things without any prompting. The world of Longlegs isn't just grim. It's also quietly chaotic. There's no sense of control. It truly feels like your worst nightmares, where you're just strapped in for a ride your brain has concocted.

Delving deeper into specific plot points or third-act images that really accentuate that sensation would spoil the twists that make Longlegs such an evocative feature. What can be said is that the masterful visual scheme of the production works wonders in selling up that suffocatingly ominous atmosphere. Perkins and cinematographer Andrés Arochi tell the story of Harkins and Longlegs emphasizing sustained wide shots with ornate framing. There's impressive preciseness to the blocking that eerily contrasts with the unsettling storytelling material. Even just a simple conversation between Harker and the traumatized Carrie Anne Camera (Kiernan Shipka) demonstrates impressive detail in how it's composed. These two women are never shown on-screen together, they each occupy separate wide shots for this dialogue. Camera is seen from the front while Harker is viewed from a side-profile angle. It's a tiny touch, but one signifying how much distance there is between the characters. They're not just occupying different shots. The way they position themselves for the camera is incredibly different. 

Looking back on the film, it's also interesting how much Perkins emphasizes the aftermath of grisly chaos rather than explicitly showing it on-screen. This isn't uniformly true for the entire film, of course. We see rotting bodies, decapitated cow heads, one guy getting his head blown off, and one truly vicious set piece revolving around graphic bodily harm. However, viewers often learn about the aftermath of grisly slayings and suicides, hear brutal actions happening off-screen, or see everything leading up to a killing but the killing itself. It's a fascinating detail that's easy to lose track of (I certainly did until I sat down to write this review!), but one that initially puts you right in the headspace of Harker. Primarily, we are hearing second-hand information about unspeakable violence rather than witnessing it. This echoes how Harker is learning information about Longlegs killings from decades earlier. We're often on the same level as her when it comes to the carnage.

Plus, leaving things to the imagination really is so much more effective. Take an eerie sequence where the image of a slayed family is played against audio of that family's father making a 911 call just before he kills his loved ones. We never see blood splatter on the walls, but we hear their misery as the audience's eyes gaze on a photo of the family in happier times. Utilizing ambiguity and juxtaposition in this manner gives Longlegs truly distinctive scary sequences all of its own. This scene also epitomizes the feature's terrific and welcome emphasis on the imperfections of technology. The crackling of vintage phone calls is emphasized in the sound design, a small detail reinforcing the limitations of mid-1990s communications devices. However, there's something just innately unnerving about having that noise blaring through movie theater speakers. Similarly, washed-out colors in vintage Polaroid photographs accentuate the grisliness those images captured. 

Longlegs is a visual tour de force and the latest Osgood Perkins also flourishes as a showcase for deeply talented actors. Modern horror icon Maika Monroe makes for a terrific anchor as Harker, while Alicia Witt's supporting performance as Harker's mother just gets more and more captivating as the movie goes on. As for Nicolas Cage as Longlegs, I was mesmerized at how distinctly Cage-ian this performance is while also being utterly terrifying. Cage indulges in the big line deliveries (including extended singing!) he's so refined into an artform after decades of performing. Yet the sparse sound design & score, not to mention the idiosyncratic cinematography, reinforce the unsettling qualities of his acting. Cage's star persona is a launchpad into something totally original rather than a trait that overwhelms the figure's intimidating nature. 

Granted, his big swings, much like Longlegs as an entire movie, won't be for everyone. As for me, I couldn't get enough. I was clenching my fists in anxiety the entire time! Right from that snowy start, Longlegs weaves a captivating tale of inescapable darkness.

MaXXXine Never Emerges From Shadows of the Past

Writer/Director Ti West’s MaXXXine is the end of a horror movie trilogy established by X and Pearl. However, what immediately stands out about this production is how it starts. MaXXXine’s first 25-ish minutes consist of seemingly standalone sequences that each would work fine as a cold open prologue. Protagonist Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) going out to an audition. A sequence where the camera glides through a peep show Minx is working in. An adolescent Minx getting her performances coached by her off-screen father in monochromatic home video footage. Individually, each of these scenes would work fine as a “special shoot” teaser trailer. Strung together, there’s no rhythm between these scenes. MaXXXine keeps starting, stopping, and then starting again without enough juicy campy entertainment to compensate for the wonky structure.

This strangely disjointed kick-off leads into a story following Minx, after the grisly events of X, trying to make it big as an actress in Hollywood. It seems like she’s finally got a big horror movie role that could launch her to stardom beyond the porno world, especially since director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) has taken a shine to her. However, Minx’s work associates and friends keep getting brutally murdered. A slasher villain is targeting Minx…and could it all be connected to how she slayed her way to survival in X? The glitz of Hollywood is about to collide with the harsh realities Minx has tried to escape her entire life.

Once the endless series of prologues are finished, the greatest takeaway MaXXXine instills is an unfortunate sense of “playing the hits”. With Pearl turning into the source of several famous memes, MaXXXine is now all too happy to deliver elements evoking that film and X. Minx’s biggest freak out sequences are an attempt to make the next “I’m a star!” happen. Characters keep delivering lengthy monologues in the vein of Pearl’s big single-take speech from Pearl. Those elements registered as entertainingly surprising in Pearl. Trying to recreate that magic in the bottle just deprives MaXXXine of its own unique energy. Opting to function as a 1980s horror pastiche further dilutes the idiosyncrasies of West’s latest creation. This era’s spooky material has been mined so much in the last decade. MaXXXine doesn’t score lots of exciting thrills with its approach to that epoch of horror cinema.

Despite these grave shortcomings, MaXXXine largely registers as a pleasantly entertaining diversion, especially whenever West gets his freak on. A big gnarly set piece where Maxine gets revenge on a would-be mugger is delightfully extreme. Practical effects work on the vicious kills are well-executed. A late dark gag involving a supporting character wandering around with a weapon lodged into one of her eyes makes for a memorable visual. Similarly, Kevin Bacon’s wildly stylized performance as a Southern-fried Private Eye is a hoot. His flowery line deliveries and cavalier attitude towards the carnage around him are qualities just bursting with personality.

Unfortunately, MaXXXine doesn’t quite provide enough slasher or giallo fun to evade the sense that something is missing. This motion picture is ultimately too straightforward an exercise to be chaotically frightening or great camp cinema. Most disappointingly, I wish MaXXXine had anything to say about sex work or even just West’s own relationship to pornography. Despite being the rare American film anchored by a sex worker protagonist, MaXXXine still uses, like so many movies, folks in this field largely as fodder for corpses. Cops get more screentime and backstory than other sex workers Maxine hangs out with. On-screen depictions of sexuality, meanwhile, don’t register with specificity. Why is a movie with XXX in its title so aloof from sexuality?

MaXXXine isn’t a terrible movie. It is, however, a prime example of a film where nothing on-screen is ever quite good enough to distract from the potential left on the table. Plus, Ti West insists on reminding viewers of superior productions like Pearl and countless 80s horror classics. The past isn’t done with Maxine Minx. Unfortunately, a too cozy relationship with the past hurts MaXXXine as a whole movie!