Written by: Mark L. Smith
Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane
Rating: [2.5/5]
With most natural disasters, there’s not much to be done to avoid its impact other than to evacuate or try to ride it out. However, evidently, trying to curb the impact of tornadoes has some science behind it or at least Twisters would have you believe. Instead of running away we have characters running towards these destructive winds. While presenting some intriguing ideas, unfortunately, this film fails to carry anything intriguing as it trudges along.
As a storm chaser who seeks to lessen the intensity of tornadoes, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) loses some of her colleagues and boyfriend to a storm. Leaving that life behind she gets approached by one of her former colleagues Javi (Anthony Ramos) to join his organization StormPAR that seeks to run models on the best way to take down tornadoes. Reluctantly joining them, they encounter some competition in storm chasing by a YouTube stormchaser Tyler Owens (Glen Powell).
While having never seen the original Twister or any tornado related film, I came into Twisters with the promise of Lee Isaac Chung’s second film following his incredible debut in Minari and a strong cast of three young stars in Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar Jones, and Anthony Ramos. Well all of these elements came together for this film, but unfortunately none of it really comes together as it fails to both entertain and pull me into this world. Instead, it proved a grating experience and one with wholly uninteresting characters at the center of it all.
Amidst all the storm chasing going on, Twisters did present some interesting tidbits about the damage tornadoes can cause and what the aftermath looks like. After all, these storm chasers get the thrill of taking down these tornadoes where they can certainly fail but it’s the people impacted by these storms that feel the brunt of it. These storm chasers can move on but not the people that now have to rebuild their homes. This element grounds the film, especially when we see the motives of one of the ancillary characters with the now-available real estate as a result of these tornadoes. It helps differentiate those in it purely for nefarious reasons and the more noble ones, which this film takes the time to directly spell out.
Despite some elements that work in isolation the main element hampering this film came from how soulless it ultimately felt. Far too paint-by-numbers and never did anything to really hook me into the story. Instead of going into more depth with these characters we get a narrative that spends far too much time on the theoretical ways in which they could stop a tornado. A line of thinking and theorizing that would not actually work in the real world making this a fantasy that goes about its story in such a tedious manner that left me feeling completely disconnected from it.
The lack of heart of this film felt even more jarring to me because Lee Isaac Chung sat in the directorial chair for this one. Chung went from creating such a gorgeous family tale with Minari and his voice completely gets lost in this film where it felt like any journeyman director could have stepped in and created this. This exemplifies one of the fears of when an independent filmmaker signs in to direct a tentpole feature with many more hands in the pot trying to steer the ship. I hope he certainly got a nice paycheck for this, but it comes nowhere close to displaying what made his first feature so impressive.
Even with Glen Powell in movie star mode as Tyler Owens and a decent lead performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones, I did not feel it with Twisters. It certainly has some impressive tornado sequences where the technical elements of the film shines but in the end the characters in this film and the general plot just did not come together into something either entertaining or thrilling as the premise promised. It certainly made me want to go back and revisit the original film to see what may have been lost this go-around given the positive reputation but if this film’s any indication the movies about these tornado storm chasers are not for me.
Films with Josh 
