Arts & Culture

Where: In theatres
What: Movie, 122 minutes.
When: Fri., July 19
Genre: Action
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: The beloved 1996 disaster film gets an update in this entertaining, if not exactly memorable, summer blockbuster.

THERE ARE SOME There are some indelible images from 1996’s Twister that spawned countless imitators and spoofs — think of the cow twirling around midair through a tornado or wind completely engulfing a drive-in screening of The Shining (1980), or, if you’re romantically inclined, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton huddled together under a yellow raincoat. It’s no surprise that our IP-obsessed era would produce a reboot or sequel to the film, but it’s a surprise how competent and entertaining it turned out to be.

Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, who is known for decidedly more indie fare like the Oscar-nominated Minari (2020), Twisters sets the action in the current day with a new batch of stars. Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) plays Kate, a brilliant meteorologist living in New York; Anthony Ramos (In the Heights) is Javi, her friend who now works for the sinister Storm Corp.; and current Hollywood darling Glenn Powell (Anyone but You) plays Tyler, a storm chaser and minor Internet celebrity. Traumatized by an early experience with a massive tornado, Kate has given up storm chasing and taken a job at the Weather Network, but she’s lured back to Oklahoma by Javi, who implores her to help him with a cutting-edge project to predict tornado patterns and save communities from destruction. There, she meets Tyler, an obnoxious showboat and self-branded “Tornado Wrangler,” who ends up being a sweetie with a sense of community duty and plenty of cowboy wisdom.

Similarities between this film and the original are ample. The two films have an almost identical narrative structure: there is the ragtag gang of storm chasers versus the tech-heavy corporation, a traumatized main character grappling with her past and a bucket of some science experiment that needs to get sucked up into the tornado. But unlike other reboots or sequels that will bring in the original actors for a generally distracting cameo (looking at you Jurassic World Dominion), Twisters folds its references and homages more or less seamlessly into the plot. So, instead of a pure fan-service exercise, we have a film that’s probably accessible, and hopefully enjoyable, to audiences unaware of the original. The only barrier of entry is a healthy appreciation of Hollywood disaster film tropes: there is plenty of crashing debris, anguished shouting and implausible-seeming science on offer here.

But there are weak moments — the awkward use of handheld cameras and drone footage, the baffling music choices — and Edgar-Jones is a bit of a blank slate; her Kate isn’t much more than a cypher for what the film needs. She’s a big-city ice queen, traumatized ingenue, down-home country girl and science genius. What defines her most is her competence, which isn’t enough next to Powell’s grinning daredevil and his motley troupe of hippie storm chasers.

We will see if a story about salt-of-the-earth adrenaline-junkie scientists will connect with a 2024 audience. And while we may be sick of cynical reboots and sequels, Twisters feels like a throwback in a way I appreciate: just a no-frills, entertaining (but probably not memorable) summer blockbuster that doesn’t overstay its welcome.