Twisters - Review

As a child of the 90s, each year there would be THE movie of the Winter, the one that everyone had to see and in 1996 that movie was Twister. I remember seeing it at my local cinema and to this day, the sounds, the destruction, all of it, it stuck with me. So when I heard that a new one was on its way, I was very cautious, could a sequel almost 30 years later really deliver the same impact? The answer is mostly.

Twisters is not a real sequel to the 1996 movie, but it does make a few references to it, mostly at the start, then it carves its own path, pun intended. The movie focuses on Kate Cooper, a PHD student who has the idea that a Twister could be snuffed out from the inside, however during a field test disaster strikes and leaves her unwilling to continue. Five years later, a friend from her past arrives to ask for her help in chasing twisters, as they believe they have the right tech to map them and with that, predict where they are going to show up. Upon arriving back in Oklahoma, Kate and her friend Javi encounter Tyler Owens a YouTube star and twister wrangler. In order to avoid any spoilers, I won’t say anything more than that, but I will say that the story doesn’t follow a predetermined path, as the chaotic weather, reveals a few interesting aspects of the films leads.

While the story was enjoyable, most of that came down to the actors, I did say it doesn’t follow a predetermined path, but it does stick to more than a few Hollywood tropes. There is nothing wrong with tropes, they stick around for a reason, but the movie really had the chance to do something different, rather than follow the trend of a destruction movie. While the movie was also insistent on it not being a sequel, or directly related to the original, there are a lot of familiar elements in here. There are two rival teams both trying to get the lead, a former storm chaser who has been out of the game, but is drawn back into the life and even a visit home for some good eating. While the characters here are good, a lot of the beats felt too familiar to be all the exciting.

However, the excitement was provided by the twisters, well somewhat. I say somewhat as the movie is about half shot in the daytime, and the other half at night. The issue with presenting things at night is that it is harder to show a threat, there is one sequence where the twister is shown after some lightning and it looked amazing. Most of the time, when the film gets dark, be it night time or in the midst of a storm, it can be a little hard to follow what exactly is going on. Something that the original movie did, is play a lot with signs, not street signs, but weather ones and they do that to an extent here as well. My issue with this is that most of the time, whenever Kate has a moment of insight, the on screen action just looks to fake. There is a moment where she is watching a field of wheat and the to and fro motion is just off, seeing it will make sense. Sadly there are other issues with timing and they are not something you can just gloss over.

There are a number of editing oddities, where events happen twice on screen, once you get just get by with, but more than that is an issue. The first time I spotted it is when one of the teams was leaving a petrol station, they left and the movie cut to someone standing nearby, making a comment. The issue is that we saw the cars on the road, it then cut to a shot from above, showing the cars still leaving the petrol station, almost as if they rewound time on it. There were more and each time I spotted one, I felt myself disconnecting from what I was seeing. Something else that irked me, not once in the entire movie did anyone seek shelter below ground, in a storm shelter, something the original movie did all the time. Sure, they try to get below ground, but for some inexplicable reason, all these towns and buildings in a place know as Tornado Alley, doesn’t have one. Once or twice I can get as a Hollywood decision, but none is just stupid.

We can’t talk about a movie called Twisters and not talk about them, they look good. As we get to see a number of them in the day time and forming, there wasn’t anyway for them to hide the effects. Which is a blessing as it means they took the time and effort to really get a lot of things done right. You can see the twisters form out of the clouds, not instantly of course, but fairly quickly. Each twister also kicks up a lot of debris, which also feels good to see flying around, again there are some Hollywood-isms, but for the most part the on screen action looks great. Sadly, I can not say the same about the movies audio, there are some great songs used to wonderful effect, but that is not the issue. The first movie had a real sense of danger, when a twister was forming, the music would feel part of it, but more so the sounds of the twister, the damage it was causing, the wind it was stirring, all felt amazing. There is none of that here and it is not hyperbole to say that it was one aspect I was very much looking forward to hearing. A good disaster movie should look dangerous, but more importantly sound dangerous and I just never got the latter here.

Twisters is a good movie, but its not a great one. As someone who loves the original seeing many of the same story beats happen here, felt a little cheap. However, if you have never seen the 1996 release, there is a lot to enjoy here, my irks with it aside. If you go in and embrace the silliness of it at times, you will enjoy the story and the visuals, just know that it likely won’t blow you away.

The Score

7.5

Review access provided by Universal Pictures

The Pros

The movie has a number of incredible sequences and the effects bring them to life with great detail

The cast do a great job bringing their characters to life, with the three leads offering up an easy connection

The Cons

The movie’s audio doesn’t feel dangerous, which is a real shame

The movie hits a few too many beats that the original did, which is a shame