Despite its nostalgic reappraisal, Twister didn’t do much to stand out from the disaster movies – Dante's Peak, Armageddon, Backdraft, Deep Impact et al – that laid waste to multiplexes on a weekly basis in the ’90s. At least, not beyond the memorable Helen Hunt/Bill Paxton double act and that now-iconic flying cow.
Not an especially high bar for Lee Isaac Chung’s all-action sorta-sequel to clear, in other words – and it clears it with ease. With its peppy cast, streamlined story and about a bazillion pixels’ worth of VFX cyclones to sweep you back in your seat, it’s a fun and refreshingly old-school night at the pictures.
Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones is a reined-in but sparky lead as meteorologist Kate Cooper, a Midwesterner with a groundhog’s ability to sniff out looming weather systems. She’s from ‘Tornado Alley’, a storm-ravaged strip of Oklahoma, so there’s been plenty of practice. But there’s been hubris, too, when her experiments in tornado-busting particles indirectly leads to the deaths of her partner (Daryl McCormack) and two young fellow tornado-chasers in a showstopping opening scene.
Five years on, her surviving team mate (In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos) drags her reluctantly back from self-imposed exile in New York – only this time the twisters are coming thick and fast, and with them unscrupulous property developers, tornado tourists and hotshot YouTube storm chasers like egotistical Arkansas ‘tornado wrangler’ Tyler Owens (Glen Powell, steadily piloting his character from insufferable to semi-likeable).
It’s a fun and refreshingly old-school night at the pictures
That’s all the set-up Twisters needs before unleashing tornado after tornado, a visual effects splurge that inevitably loses some of its shock and awe through repetition. The storm sequences are thunderous, occasionally palpitation-inducingly so, but there’s only so much yee-hawing after tornados in pick-up trucks that a film can provide you with before it begins to feel like old hat. Even when it’s Love Lies Bleeding powerhouse Katy O’Brian doing the yee-hawing.
Extra comic relief comes from an enjoyably terrified British journalist, played by Downton Abbey’s Harry Hadden-Paton as if he’s still in Downton Abbey. He gets the film’s best, and nichest line – a zinger that will go down especially well in south London.
As you’d expect from the director of enriching family drama Minari, Chung manages to snatch some quieter moments amid the din. Kate’s grief never gets too much of an airing in Joseph Kosinski’s script, but there’s a touching interlude with her mum (The Affair’s Maura Tierney) that works nicely as a course correction for the character – and the film.
And when the characters finally find a higher purpose and use their skills and madcap courage to help suffering Okies, the movie belatedly finds its heart. It may not sweep you away but Twisters gives you more than your money’s worth in mayhem.
In UK cinemas Jul 17 and US theaters Jul 19.