Twisters Review: A Charming, Admirable Update On A Classic

"Twister," the Jan de Bont-directed disaster picture from 1996, is the closest thing to a perfect film this reviewer has ever seen. By "seen," not simply watched in a movie theater, or consumed during a random re-run on cable television, but revisited, time and again, for nearly 30 years, some 300 or so viewings in total, several of which were in French due to an inexplicable yet comical glitch with the DVD. If there is a harder person for "Twisters" to please than the person writing this review, may they cast the first tomato.

And yet, against all odds, "Twisters" impresses. To say it wows is a bit too generous, but it certainly satiates. It's the middle of July. It's hotter than the surface of the sun all over the map. In a year robbed of more destination viewing event pictures by last year's strikes, audiences couldn't conceivably be more primed to watch Glen Powell in a cowboy hat grin at oncoming tornadoes.

"Twisters" can't quite recapture the magic of its predecessor, but setting aside the Herculean task of clearing that high bar, it is nonetheless an entertaining and heartfelt attempt, if not to proudly step out of its forebear's shadow, then to charmingly poke its head out to smile and wave politely.

Back in 2020, it was reported in Variety that "Top Gun: Maverick" director Joseph Kosinski was being eyed to remake "Twister." Though that project didn't come to fruition as intended, he retains a "story by" credit here for "Twisters." Unlike Kosinski's "Maverick," this new film isn't a reboot or a continuation of the original, but something much more effective. Screenwriter Mark L. Smith, working from Kosinski's story, and director Lee Isaac Chung seek to capture everything that made the first film work, while at times inverting its narrative as a rhyming companion piece.

"Twister" followed a wild storm chaser domesticated into a straight-laced meteorologist returning to his roots and reconnecting with the love of his love while competing with stuffy, corporate-backed rivals. Here, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is playing for the other team, a slick and hi-tech outfit with dubious financial motives, brought back to the game by her former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos), the only other surviving member of the crew she ran with half a decade ago. Kate had a dream about using science to neutralize tornados from within, and a miscalculation about her plan's implementation led to her lover and all their friends dying. Now Javi wants to use military-grade radars to map these weather events but needs Kate's instinctual gifts for weather prediction to make it happen. But since they're the staid, corporatized outfit, they run afoul of Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a storm chaser with a YouTube channel and a ragtag groups of compadres who more closely resemble Helen Hunt's crew from the original. By changing up those core dynamics, the film wrings a different kind of drama from the conflicts surrounding the storms themselves.

That inversion also works against the film. "Twister" had two great leads in Bill Paxton and Hunt, but its supporting cast featured a murderer's row of character actors, including "Succession" standout Alan Ruck, "Tar" director Todd Field, and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. Every background player felt fully realized and memorable, no doubt bolstered by the fact that Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin's script was punched up by an equally diverse array of gifted script doctors, like Joss Whedon and Steve Zaillian. Some unlikely background players like TV on The Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe and "Love Lies Bleeding" star Katy O'Brian provide necessary texture to "Twisters" to be sure, but the roster depth is just not there. Even new Superman actor David Corenswet is saddled with a pale imitation of Cary Elwes' prickly antagonist role from the original. But that's because all the focus is reserved for its leads, which is both a gift and a curse.

Here, Powell leverages his megawatt charisma to hoist the entire picture on his broad shoulders, a true movie star who maximizes every minute of his screen time. But he doesn't even show for the first half hour. Until then, Edgar-Jones is solid but doesn't quite match his presence. Their slow-burn romance is charming but lacks the screwball back-and-forth of Paxton and Hunt that anchors the original. That's to say nothing of Ramos, who has a meaty enough part and a strong arc, but feels strangely isolated from the ensemble. But those storms, though, are amazing enough to make you look past all of that.

Anyone baffled by the decision to have the Oscar-nominated director of "Minari" helm the sequel to one of the greatest disaster movies ever made will have their confusion ameliorated instantly. From the film's opening frames, the way Lee Isaac Chung and frequent J.J. Abrams collaborator cinematographer Dan Mindel lens the sweeping vistas and wheat fields makes the film's Amblin Entertainment logo feel all the more apt. But as effective as Chung proves with capturing the intimacy and the heart of the picture, he does so by marrying it to a difficult-to-thread approach to the film's action. This is a movie that must repeatedly mine thrills from and highlight its protagonist's affinity for the strange, destructive majesty of tornadoes, while also balancing that excitement with the very real dread of that force's consequences. It's hard to shift gears from Tyler's cowboy exclamations at the film's enthralling spectacle to the tender, patient way Chung interrogates the devastation left in the titular twisters' wake.

That work is often undone by the film's forceful and gleeful Americana bent. Benjamin Wallfisch's original score is so effective at riding this fence between summer blockbuster and solemn rumination on widespread tragedy, but it is unfortunately interrupted by nearly wall-to-wall needle drops of rollicking rock and country tunes. At first, the music feels like a necessary evil to sell the energy of Tyler's "Jackass"-ian influencer crew, but there are 30 cuts on the soundtrack. By the film's midpoint, it begins to feel like a Coors Light commercial keeps interrupting a much better film. It feels as though the filmmakers weren't allowed to highlight the heartland without this level of pandering.

Those musical choices, coupled with the film's key conceit — that Oklahoma is experiencing an unheard-of quantity of storms — seems poised to invite climate change commentary that the film never ends up engaging with. (Climate change isn't mentioned in "Twisters" at all.) Instead, the film returns, time and again, to the more easily digestible themes about togetherness and community and helping our fellow man. All admirable ideas, to be sure, but it sure might have been nice to turn the jukebox down long enough to pay even passing lip service to something a little more challenging.

"Twisters" blows into theaters July 19.