Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Writers: Mark L. Smith, Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Harry Hadden-Paton,  Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe, David Corenswet, Maura Tierney

Back in 1996, legendary director Jan de Bont brought us Twister, a disaster movie about tornadoes and the power of nature, with the film giving Helen Hunt her first big movie role and pushing the star that is/was the late Bill Paxton. It was quite a feat in filmmaking at the time, with its level of VFX and CGI, and was a critical and commercial success. Indeed, I consider it to be a top tier blockbuster. Now, almost thirty years on, we have a standalone sequel. Daisy Edgar-Jones is the female lead, in her second major movie role, and Glen Powell is the male lead, with his star and credentials being on an upward trajectory of late. Similar to Hunt and Paxton, you might say. Does this sort-of sequel stand up against its parent film in a similar way, or is it one disaster too many?

Ex-storm chaser Kate (Edgar-Jones) works for the NOAA in New York City, having given up storm chasing five years previously due to a traumatic experience when experimenting with ways to reduce the intensity of tornadoes. When her old friend Javi (Ramos) comes to New York and asks for her help on a project that involves chasing tornadoes again, she is reluctant due to her experiences, but then realises how many people she can help by studying and attempting to stop tornadoes. While assisting Javi, Kate meets rival storm-chaser/YouTuber Tyler (Powell) and his team. As certain things come to light, Kate must decide where her loyalties, and her morals, truly lie, as well as finish what she had set out to do five years previously.

As previously mentioned, Twister is a great film, it’s got drama, suspense, jeopardy and good characterisation. Twisters runs in much the same vein, thankfully. The effects of the tornadoes, both practical and digital, are excellent and create a very immersive and twitchy experience (meaning I was fidgeting a lot in my seat during the more perilous scenes). The stunts also go a heck of a long way to bring realism to the movie, which is very important considering how much destruction is caused in reality by tornadoes and major storms. From what I’ve read, director Chung did his due diligence in researching how to create scenes with natural disasters on an epic scale, having come from a relatively smaller scale movie and television background, and thus some of the scenes have that horror feel to them, as though the characters are being stalked by a conscious unknown entity. The tornadoes are even described anthropomorphically at some points, making them appear more like a sentient enemy that is defeatable. It does come off a little strange in some of the dialogue, personifying something that is out of human control, although it makes sense for the plot and perhaps how Kate feels about tornadoes.

The plot itself takes an interesting angle on the characters’ approach to tornadoes, as Kate and Javi aren’t only studying tornadoes but also looking at ways to stop them in their tracks once they’ve formed, preventing them from causing damage and fatalities. It’s a noble pursuit, but its implausibility leaves something to be desired for being the answer to Kate’s need to stop tornadoes. At times the science feels like it’s just being rambled off for the sake of it (resulting in the actors looking a little dead behind the eyes as they try to reel off their science vernacular-heavy lines), but it does make for gripping drama once the words become actions. The inciting conflict on the human side seems to make little difference to much of the outcome. Rather, the overarching antagonists, being the tornadoes, run the show on that side, rendering the human conflict a smidge redundant. Although, it’s good to be reminded that humanity can really, really suck sometimes, even in the midst of devastation and destruction.

Without pushing too much of a comparison, Edgar-Jones’s character is very reflective of Hunt’s Jo in the ’96 film. She’s a strong female lead and has a good MO for doing what she does. Edgar-Jones’s performance is sturdy, and she plugs the pathos in all the right places, however it teeters on being hammed up at times, and the slips from the American accent into English are quite noticeable, which can be a little off-putting. Powell’s character is a blend of Paxton’s from Twister as well as Cary Elwes’s antagonist from the same film, making for someone who is deeper than they initially appear. Powell also gives a good performance, lending an emotional vulnerability that allows Edger-Jones’s character to be at the forefront (so it’s nice to not have a male lead trying to push his way to the front), but the character of Tyler was a little flat other than that, living up to the stereotype of a fame-chaser. (Side note: having seen Powell in a few productions lately, I’d quite like to see him take the lead in a more dramatic role in the future, while he’s got something good going for him. I want to see how versatile he can be.) Support-wise, the performances are there, but many of the characters do come across a little cliché, albeit the clichés do provide some humour here and there.

There are times when disaster movies take things a little too far (2012, I’m looking at you), but there are other times when they are a stark reminder of not only what we face from the natural world, but also what we as humans are capable of (positively and negatively). Twisters is a solid follow-up to Twister, taking everything a step further but not so far as to become apocalyptic and, well, silly. It’s captivating, thrilling and well-researched, as well as educational in some ways for those of us who live in relatively disaster-free zones in the world. Would it be too much to say you might just be… blown away?

…I’ll let myself out.