Twisters (2024)

Director Lee Isaac Chung’s disaster film is about as thrilling as it can get, far more entertaining than a screen full of wisecracking Marvel superheroes. Its love story is predictable, though be forewarned to watch closely the last scene where it diverges from the usual romantic pattern. Though following in the path of Jan de Bont’s 1996 thriller, it is not exactly a sequel because none of the earlier characters reappear.

The opening scene is set five years before the rest of the film, with PH.D. candidate Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) heading a team of graduate students testing a theory of hers for dissipating a tornado in Oklahoma. They miscalculate how powerful the tornado they are pursuing is, with everything going wrong, and they are caught up in the destruction. All but she and fellow student Javi (Anthony Ramos) are killed. Her grief is deepened in that one of the students was her boyfriend.

Five years later Kate is working in NYC with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration when Javi visits her with a proposition. He has secured backing to carry out the experiment they were backing five years earlier. Javi has assembled a team working with a mobile tornado radar company named Storm Par. He needs her to complete the team because of her intuitive knowledge of storms—of which one will develop into the kind of tornado they are seeking. She refuses at first because the trauma from the earlier tragedy still haunts her. Javi persists, eventually convincing her to give a week to his team. It should also be mentioned that Javi is still harboring romantic feelings for Kate.

Kate joins Javi in Oklahoma where she is introduced to his business partner, a real estate developer named Scott (David Corenswet). She also comes across cowboy-hatted storm chaser Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), known by his more than a million YouTube followers as “Tornado Wrangler.” He draws quite a crowd of admirers, and Kate is immediately put off by his swagger—and yet his motto “If you feel it, chase it,” also describes her approach. Since childhood she has been interested in weather, tornados in particular, and has a built-in ability to discern which storm system will develop into more than an EF1 twister. Kate scorns him for seeking fame and profit from disasters that cause so much suffering. He dubs her “City Girl” in retaliation.

Tyler’s carefully edited YouTube videos have earned him more than enough in subscriptions, ad revenue, and sale of merchandise to afford a small fleet of trucks, a loyal team of thrill seekers (none have any degree in meteorology), and expensive radar equipment. His crew of Boone, Dani, Dexter, and Lily, also includes an English journalist Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton) fearfully sitting in the back seat. He plans to write an article on Tyler and his exploits. Tyler adds to the chase of his thrill by shooting fireworks into a funnel cloud when he approaches it close enough.

The first attempt by Kate and Javi to try out her system of releasing barrels of a sodium polyacrylate solution into an EF1 tornado that touches down in a large wind farm ends in failure because Kate suffers a panic attack and flees the scene. She rejoins Ravi, and they soon spot a system that spawns twin tornados. Tyler is also in the race toward the twofunnels and decides to chase the tornado to their right. Kate, however, based on their radar data and her intuition, pursues the one on the left. Tyler’s twister peters out, whereas Kate’s becomes so powerful that Kate and Ravi barely manage to escape its ravages. The storm has severely damaged the nearby town of Crystal Springs, so she leads her team to help first responders with the recovery. So does Tyler’s crew. To her surprise, Kate learns that he uses profits from his merchandising campaigns (among which are “Storm Wrangler” T-shirts) to aid tornado victims. She also learns that Storm Par investor Marshall Riggs swoops in after a storm seeking to buy up victims’ damaged property at a bargain price.

Kate accepts Tyler’s invitation to a rodeo in Stillwater, where they begin to bond. She reveals that far from being a “city girl,” she was raised on an Oklahoma farm. Of course, a strong tornado disrupts the evening, Kate and Tyler leading the crowd to shelter in an empty motel swimming pool. Afterwards, Kate argues with Javi about Rigg’s intention to profit from the disasters they cover. Javi angrily fights back by charging that Kate was responsible for their friends’ deaths five years ago. Kate is so distressed that she leaves in one of the trucks, driving to her mother’s farm in Sapulpa. I especially enjoyed the sequence with her supportive mother Cathy, this giving us the chance to see how good veteran actress Maura Tierney is, even in a cameo role. (I’ve been surprised that other critics have failed to mention her.) The next day Tyler shows up at the farm where he learns more about her life-long passion for studying weather and her plan to destroy a tornado. Will Kate return to the fray, and will they team up to test her thesis? You might as well ask if it ever rains in the tropics.

This is a very enjoyable adventure-romance with some terrific CGI effects that foster awe at the power of Mother Nature—as well as the skills of the film’s special effects team. In one particular shot we see a house being sucked up into the air and then literally being shredded by the tremendous forces to which it is subjected. It might surprise some viewers that the director of Minari, the story of a Korean immigrant family, has helmed a summer CGI action flick, but he brings the same sensitivity to this genre, as he does to the smaller family saga. The already mentioned scene involving Kate’s mother shows this, as well as other touches, especially the ending at the airport where Tyler catches up with Kate before she boards her return flight to NYC. And the acting cast is skillful and pleasing to the eye.

In the Hebrew/Christian Scriptures “the whirlwind” appears 23 times in the NRV translation, often associated with the power of God. According to legend the prophet Elijah did not die the usual way of mortals but was “taken up to heaven” by a whirlwind. Job, in the passage above, speaks of the terror of the whirlwind, and in the last portion of the book it is out of the whirlwind that God at last responds to Job’s anguished cries. This film’s excellent storm scenes will enhance my reading experience when I next come across the word in the Bible.

Now, I don’t know how accurate the science of Kate’s theory of twister dissipation is, but mention is made of climate change intensifying the tornado season. It would have been helpful if the characters had discussed more of the details of this. A couple of the minor characters also raise the specter of unethically profiting from storm victims, with one major character wrestling with this, but he readily returns to the righteous path, his struggle with his conscience mostly offscreen.

One of the most suspenseful scenes takes place in the tornado-targeted town of El Reno. One of our pair yells, “We’ve gotta get everyone into the movie theater!” And as a horror film is being shown on the screen more people move into the auditorium, even as the tornado is tearing at the roof and Tyler struggles to hold onto one of his crew members threatened with being sucked into the sky.

And so, I echo those words, “Let’s get you into a movie theater,” one with as big a screen as you can find.” Some of the scenes of destruction might be too realistic for young children, so I caution parents to go see it first before taking primary school-aged children. Also, do not make the mistake of most of the people with whom I saw the film did, by walking out as soon as the end credits started rolling. They missed several shots with tidbits that revealed what the main characters did in the near future.

This review will be in the August issue of VP along with a set of questions for reflection and/or discussion. If you have found reviews on this site helpful, please support us by consider subscribing.