Twisters review: Big heart and massive thrills in Lee Isaac Chung’s disaster movie sequel

If you break down the 1996 disaster blockbuster Twisters, it’s not a particularly complex story.

There’s a will-they-won’t-they-get-back-together between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, a crew of supporting characters including Philip Seymour Hoffman, an antagonist in Cary Elwes and an emotional backstory involving a death. But, really, it’s about lots and lots and lots of tornadoes.

The ferocious winds scoop up cows, barns, cars and people, and it feels very, very dangerous. It’s such a wild time.

Any sequel/revival/reboot could’ve gotten away with just going hard on the special effects, creating peril and thrills, but a great one knows how to balance the spectacle with a human story.

Tornadoes are fearsome, sure, but they’re even scarier when there are emotional stakes.

Twisters, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos, makes you care about the characters, luxuriates in moments of calm and then whips you in the face with a terrifying set-piece during which any one of them really could die.

It might be a storytelling cheat, but the film opens with a group of university students, including Kate (Edgar-Jones) and Javi (Ramos), who are testing a theory that if they can send an absorbent material into the eye of the tornado, it could dissipate its power and save lives.

When the low-level twister they’ve been chasing turns into a monster one, tragedy strikes. It’s not just that the film is willing to dispose of characters immediately, the fact they cast the likes of Daryl McCormack and Kiernan Shipka in those roles ups the ante.

The risk is real and it puts the audience on notice.

Years down the line, Kate is still reliving the trauma of her encounter and is now working a meteorology desk job in Manhattan. She doesn’t go home to Oklahoma and barely returns her mum’s (Maura Tierney) calls.

When Javi convinces her to join him in chasing twisters for a week. His argument is the season is longer and more savage and people are dying, and he has new technology that could map the twisters but he needs her skills and instincts.

On the road, she meets Tyler (Powell), a bombastic and seemingly reckless YouTube chaser who calls himself the Tornado Wrangler. But, of course, there’s more to Tyler than his over-confident schtick.

Twisters is a lot like Twister in the formula it’s following — fun supporting characters) Sasha Lane, Katy O’Brien, David Corenswet and Harry Hadden-Patton), Kate’s PTSD and a bourgeoning romance between her and Tyler.

Director Lee Isaac Chung made the deeply personal, semi-autobiographical drama Minari a few years ago and was nominated for two Oscars for his troubles, so he was always going to be able to bring emotional depth to an action extravaganza — which he did.

Scenes between Kate and Tyler and Kate and her mother feel lived-in and real. But the most poignant ones are of Kate on her own, standing against the vast Oklahoma landscape, looking into the sky. You could almost see her interiority.

What was less known is Chung’s ability to handle the huge action set-pieces but even on this score, he does a great job. There’s momentum, movement and tension. Don’t be surprised if you fling yourself back in your cinema seat at just a chicken landing on a car bonnet just because you’re so amped up.

Twisters is what you want from a blockbuster – massive thrills and actual pathos.

Rating: 4/5

Twisters is in cinemas now