Twisters

Overview

A cinema plays a key part in Twisters. Frankenstein flickers across its screen, but mother nature proves not only more of a monster, but also an audience member worse than folks who can't manage to spend two hours in a darkened room without their phones. There's a knowing air to featuring a picture palace in this disaster-flick sequel from Minari director Lee Isaac Chung and The Boys in the Boat screenwriter Mark L Smith, reminding viewers how deeply this genre and this format are linked. Almost three decades ago, as co-penned by Michael Crichton fresh off Jurassic Park's mammoth success, 1996's Twister packed movie theatres worldwide to the tune of nearly half-a-billion dollars, doing so with a spectacle. No matter if its sequel reaches the same heights at the box office globally, it too delivers better-on-the-big-screen sights, chief among them Chung and cinematographer Dan Mindel's (Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker) naturalistic imagery.

For those unaware going in that the filmmaker behind six-time Oscar contender Minari — a helmer who received a Best Director Academy Award nomination for his gorgeous and heartfelt work, in fact — is also steering Twisters, it isn't hard to guess from its look, including in its opening moments alone. The movie begins with storm chasers doing what they enthusiastically do. It also kicks off with a horror turn of events thanks to a tornado that exceeds their expectations, and with the crew's survivors afterwards struggling with trauma that'll later drive them forward. In these scenes and beyond, this isn't a picture of visual gloss and sheen, as witnessed right down to its lighting. Twisters remains polished, of course. It also can't tell its tale without CGI. But a choice as pivotal as valuing a genuine aesthetic tone over a gleaming one has a massive impact.

Usually gifted at reading where a whirlwind is headed, hailing from Tornado Alley and introduced with her college pals attempting to demonstrate that her passion project can tame superstorms, Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Where the Crawdads Sing) makes it out of the Twisters' first big tempest alive. Five years later when the feature swiftly picks up, she has swapped field work for sitting behind a New York desk as a meteorologist, however. Then her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos, Dumb Money) tracks her down with a proposal: return to Oklahoma by his side, with his business using portable radars to scan the squalls. She's hesitant — her efforts to avoid going home have been keenly felt by her mother (Maura Tierney, The Iron Claw), too — but eventually agrees to lend her skills in predicting tornado paths to Javi's team for a single week.

As Kate quickly learns, wild swirls aren't just associated with the weather when she's back rushing after gales with the wind literally in her hair. Javi's ultra-professional squad has a fierce rivalry with cowboy-style "tornado wrangler" Tyler Owens (Glen Powell, Hit Man) and his ragtag posse of offsiders, who YouTube their every move, have a hefty online following as a result, sling merchandise with his face on it, seem as cavalier as anyone can come and are eager to discover if they can shoot fireworks into a storm. If it initially appears as if there's an experts-versus-amateurs, experience-versus-influencers battle at the heart of Twisters, Chung and Smith never skew that simplistic. Rather, one of their themes is valuing knowledge but not gatekeeping or snap judgements — and, as its debut twister reinforces from the outset, recognising the importance of diving beyond first perceptions.

Vortexes wow, threaten and devastate. Opposites-attract type characters do exactly that. Not everyone's motives are what they might seem. Personal histories demand overcoming as much as the gusty uproars spiralling around America's centre. Those expected plot mechanics don't play out perfunctorily, though, for a few reasons. The story behind the script is credited to Powell's Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, who was previously eyed to helm here — and while there's a few familiar beats evident in the last flick in cinemas boasting his involvement and this one, a different need for speed pulses through, as well as a different contemplation of soaring versus being grounded. In what shouldn't feel like such a rarity for a disaster film but does given where the genre typically heads, Twisters also cares about its figures, the sense of awe that gets them bounding into danger, the clash between the environment and those who live within it, the effect of climate change, the human toll that tornadoes wreak, the communities affected and intimate stories set shaped by America's landscape.

While Twister isn't the only movie that springs to mind when thinking about Helen Hunt (Hacks) and the late Bill Paxton (The Circle), it's up there with the instant selections. Edgar-Jones, Ramos and Powell each enter Twisters on recent rolls of standout roles that respectively cover Normal People, In the Heights and Anyone But You, and all add this to their list of memorable parts. Matching Chung's approach and visuals, there's an earthiness and sincerity to Edgar-Jones' performance as the movie's haunted and wounded action hero. Ramos, as innately charming an on-screen presence as Powell, ensures that his complicated character is always empathetic. Dialling up the swagger, then the charisma and thoughtfulness, Powell equally navigates a textured arc with confidence. Albeit in support — and adding flavour as a group more than individually — the film's savvy casting also extends to The Crowded Room's Sasha Lane, Love Lies Bleeding's Katy O'Brian, Nope's Brandon Perea, Pantheon's Tunde Adebimpe, Totally Killer's Kiernan Shipka, Bad Sisters' Daryl McCormack and Pearl's David Corenswet.

Making certain that Twisters' spinning furores don't blow its people, their emotions and their everyday lives away — including when that's a grimly inescapable element of the narrative, because disaster movies always have a body count — still requires those tempests to thunder with full cinema-shaking sound and fury. Getting personal here isn't a case of skimping on effects, then, even if cows don't fly this time. Instead, Chung adds his clear affection for character, for seeing his main players react to the wonders around them Spielberg-style (the iconic The Fabelmans filmmaker is an executive producer), and for portraying the US terrain so routinely ravaged by the weather to digital and practical wizardry that values the sensory and intense (as also aided by editing from Terilyn A Shropshire, The Woman King). No one wants a storm to strike twice, but this franchise has achieved it — and as gets yelled within its frames, does its utmost to notch up another feat. "We've gotta get everyone into the movie theatre," it shouts; that's exactly where this flick is a sight to behold.