Twisters (2024 | USA | 162 minutes | Lee Isaac Chung)
A young and wild group of storm chasers lead by the enigmatic Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is on the hunt for a tornado in the famous tornado alley of Oklahoma. They aren’t just in it for the thrill, but to find a way of deconstructing the storms and in turn saving untold numbers of lives. On one of these ventures, they underestimate the power of the cyclone and Kate loses three of her best friends. Leap forward 5 years and she’s living comfortably at a desk job in NYC when the other survivor of her past life, Javi (Anthony Ramos) tries to pull her back in with the promise of taking up her mantel of saving lives once again. She begrudgingly accepts, but with trauma rearing its ugly head, she’s having trouble finding her footing. On top of that, a tornado cowboy by the name of Tyler (Glen Powell) is egging her on and reminding her of all that’s wrong with storm chasing… or so she thinks. Tyler isn’t what he seemed at first glance and neither is Javi’s new team; Kate has to pull herself together and figure out what she really wants.
No, you don’t have to see Twister to “get” the newly released Twisters, but you’ll get a lot more joy out of it if you do… especially if you’re a long-time re-watcher of the first flick like myself. If you look back at 1996’s Twister (holy crap has it really been almost 20 years?!) you’ll find yourself face to face with some seriously talented actors (Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes, and on and on) in a ridiculous storyline that you really can’t help but love. So Twisters, in my opinion, had a lot to live up to. Walking that line between taking yourself too seriously and over-the-top ridiculous is a hard one to tread, but I think director Lee Isaac Chung knocked it out of the park. With a few solid films under his belt, most specifically the stellar first-generation immigrant narrative Minari, Chung has a way of grasping the humanity in any situation and laying it bare… even in the middle of a tornado as a jackass shoots rockets off to see what will happen.
While the storyline is slightly different from its predecessor, Twisters still feels close enough to the original to give some serious nostalgic vibes. What made this one fun and set apart is Kate starting out on the “serious team” side of the story with lots of money and no heart… but eventually finding her place with the goofy but talented and warm group of weirdos where she belongs. Another element of uniqueness in this film was the hot but annoying trickster character Tyler (rather than Paxton’s Bill) who turns out to be a softie whose facade is easily broken down after one sassy remark from Kate. Yes, it follows the most ridiculous romantic and blockbustery tropes you can think of but it doesn’t matter, it’s everything I’d hoped it would be. I don’t want to get into any more of the film for fear of giving away too much of the fun. Get yourself a bucket of popcorn and soda and buckle up, Twisters is a fantastically ridiculous movie with a bit of heart and zero science (but 1000% fun).
Twisters arrives in theaters on 7/19