Against her initial judgment, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) agrees to return to her dusty Oklahoma hometown with childhood friend Javi (Anthony Ramos).  Having lost her friends years before in a storm-chasing accident, Kate moved to New York City to work at the National Weather Institute, but she is convinced to return home and help Javi capture the most detailed structural photographs of tornadoes so that the technology can be used to better prepare the at-risk communities.  When she arrives, they are not alone, as the dangerous work has attracted droves of hobbyists all following Tyler (Glen Powell), a reckless YouTuber who goes by the handle Tornado Wrangler in what promises to be an overactive season in Tornado Valley. 

Lee Isaac Chung directs Twisters, a film somewhat tangentially related to Jan de Bont’s Twister (1996), but neither the marketing, audience, or Universal seems to know if they want to call it a sequel or a reboot.  Written by Mark L. Smith, though the story was broken by Joseph Kosinski, the film runs 122 minutes and features all the hallmarks of a good disaster film as it follows pretty closely in the footsteps of its predecessor while not feeling like a total carbon copy.   

The cold opening of the film is a bit of an abnormality in that it is both one of the more exciting scenes of the film but incredibly frustrating with its characters.  These renegade meteorologists in search of a research grant chase down a forming tornado with barrels full of a sodium polyacrylate solution they plan to send into the storm, pulling out its moisture and thereby suffocating it.  Kate and Javi are joined by their three friends, Addy (Kiernan Shipka), Praveen (Nik Dodani), and Jeb (Daryl McCormack), as they excitedly chase down what was giving signs of being a smaller cell, but they realize all too late that it gained strength and was much bigger than they were equipped to handle.  There are some real moments of fear in this opening sequence that the later set pieces will only brush up against, but this younger cast is written in such an insufferable way that it becomes hard to engage with them on an emotional level.  It is not quite TikTok cringe – the film retains its ire, errr, admiration for content creators later with Tyler and his cohort – but coupled with Kate’s almost clairvoyant connection with the weather systems, the opening feels more like a hodgepodge of ideas than the thrill-seeking, dumped off the deep end sequence that it was designed to be. 

From there, we jump forward five years to the present day where Kate is still able to commune with the clouds, and Javi, after serving some time in the military and is now working in the private sector though still has access to old military radar prototypes.  It lacks the getting the team back together excitement that these scenes typically carry because A: we barely know these characters and B: it reminds us that their young adult crew all died in the field.  Chung and Smith do not allow us to dwell too much on the past, though, as there is a very active storm cell approaching and almost as soon as Kate shakes off the jet lag, they are racing through the fields – past the wind turbines – and seeking the eye of the storm. 

Pushing having to talk about Powell’s empty bravado for as long as possible, Twisters has a very strange silence about themes far deeper than its summer blockbuster DNA is equipped to discuss, but nevertheless has to confront by the nature of the story it is seeking to tell; climate change and renewable energy.  The script is not shy about stating that it is an overactive and dangerous season for Tornado Valley, but it leaves it at that as if it were a one-off unfortunate blip in an otherwise flatlined study.  A team of meteorologists should know that weather is all part of a larger chain of reactions and that as climate change continues to morph and systems become longer, stronger, and more unpredictable, the technology that Javi is trying to prove would help to not curb these late stage effects but at least allow residents more time to make those code red preparations.  Now, it is revealed that Javi is working for an insurance company that wants to suck up the ravaged land on the cheap which is a whole separate can of worms that the film still handles with the kiddy gloves on instead of taking the opportunity to drag predatory insurance companies – or, let us cut the redundancy, and just call them insurance companies – through the mud and unmasking them as the villains and the leaches which they are.  If anything, the most frightful imagery of the film is reserved for the wind turbines that catch fire and crash down all around as the tornado tears through the field.  It is a scene that looks like it was pulled from an oil-backed political ad, and while the third-act monster storm does wreak hell on an oil refinery, the camera is more concerned with the spectacle of the tower of fire piercing the sky than it is the damage whereas the earlier wind turbine scene felt much more targeted and focused on the breaking down of the renewable energy grid as the turbines collapsed and speared into the ground. 

Being so thin on theme, there is little left to examine in Twisters than Powell’s sauntering Tyler, a bold, carefree foil to Kate who ends up having more in common with each other than they originally had thought.  He is a pestering presence, and like with his work in Hit Man (2023), is great in front of the camera, but terrible in sharing the scene.  It is not that he is actively or maliciously upstaging his scene partners, but he just offers them very little to play off of. All the work is done in the camera placement or Terilyn A. Shropshire’s editing instead of in his performance as he recites his lines with gusto, but can never shake the sense that there is an invisible barrier around him at all times that always keeps him somewhat removed from the texture of the scene and his partners. 

While he cannot form a connection with any of these characters in the more plot-driven scenes, Powell does shine as an action star almost as if he is vying to be his generation’s Tom Cruise; a generous comparison to be sure, but few others in his class seem to be stepping up to the plate.  The pinnacle of this is at the midway point when he and Kate attend a rodeo and a rouge storm forms causing a panic.  In the chaos, the pair of budding romantics do what they can to help the people move to safety, including a mother and her young daughter.  Seeking shelter in the corner of an empty pool, Chung’s indie sensibilities come into play as the storm is never captured by the lens, only the aftermath, but before that, while it passes by, Dan Mindel’s lens comes in tight on the clenched faces our heroes and their wards.  We understand the fear even if we do not see the threat, and as they comb through the rubble – one of many instances in the film – it stands as a cold reminder of the damage that nature can inflict. 

Unfortunately, this same restraint is, well, thrown to the winds in the third act when Tyler gains superhuman strength, beyond just the adrenaline rush, and holds on to Lilly (Sasha Lane), his drone operator, keeping her from being sucked into a tornado by simply angling his foot against a bolted cinema seat after the wall has been torn down and the funnel comes racing towards them.  The film does not manage its ensemble well enough for us to really become invested in any of Tyler’s team so this scene lands with little impact and overall, it unfortunately underutilizes Brandon Perea and Katy O’Brian, among others. They are not turned into tornado fodder, either, which gives the film a strange sense of insulation from danger, even in the climax. It is the kind of goofy nonsense that blockbuster action films often peddle, so it is hard to hold it against the film, but it is a bridge too far into incredulity.  The winking implication that cinema saves lives, however, is appreciated! 

Twisters should be better, but it gets by as it is not a franchise that has been reanimated back to life time and time again since its inception.  The emotional cliffhanger ending and nothing-to-scoff-at box office performance make conditions perfect for a sequel in two or three years that will almost certainly underperform and underwhelm as there is nothing else more to mine from this concept.  The lack of easter eggs and callbacks is refreshing, but we will surely be seeing Kate, Tyler, and Javi return again to… track? Observe? Fend off another tornado?  Between cows, sharks, and dissatisfied Kansas farmgirls, there really is not much left for tornados to be affiliated with on screen, but we can bet that executives without a single creative bone in their bodies will find a way; just as nature intended.