Quick synopsis: Haunted by a past encounter with extreme weather conditions, Kate is tempted back into tornado chasing in an attempt to prove her method of disintegrating dangerous tornados will work.
Let’s say you were on a date with someone. The two of you have been messaging for a while and there have been a few moments where their actions could be misconstrued as rude and/or abusive but you felt “I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt”. There’s an undeniable spark between the two so you decide to meet. You sit at the restaurant waiting for them, it’s exciting and you’re nervous. They suddenly appear out of nowhere spinning a circle whilst operating a chainsaw, nearly decapitating you and forcing you to jump away at the last second to avoid getting hurt. For whatever reason, you continue the date. On the journey home they stop the car to let some ducks cross the road, and then pull someone out of a burning car. The next day you get a text from your friend asking how it went. Are you going to respond “Oh it was great, they were so cute and saved someone’s life”, or are you going to respond “They nearly killed me with a chainsaw, fucking sociopath”? The odds are that it will be the second. Once someone nearly kills you with their arrogance and stupidity, it’s hard to overcome that initial “what the fuck is their problem?” feeling, and it will taint every action they do from that point on. I mention that because in Twisters, the kind-of sequel to the 1996 “Oh yeah that film existed, and made a lot of money” disaster Funtime flick Twister, very early on in their interactions we witness Glen Powell’s character Tyler Owens nearly run Kate (a fantastic Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Javi (Anthony Ramos) off the road whilst they’re all chasing a tornado. It’s very easy to see how those actions could have killed those characters. After that, it’s hard to buy him as a romantic lead or someone to root for.
That’s a shame, if they cut out those 3-seconds of almost vehicular manslaughter then Twisters would work a lot better than it does. It’s a much better film than you’d assume it would be. The tornado scenes are incredible to look at, giving you a true sense of the damage they can cause. People who have never seen a tornado may think, “It’s just a bit of wind, just put some Blu-Tack on your shoes and you’ll be fine”. Twisters does a fantastic job of showing why that’s stupid (beyond how expensive Blu-Tack is now), they are destructive forces of nature that arrive, fuck shit up completely, and then leave. That is never more felt than in the opening scene, which introduces a group of dynamic and loveable (plus incredibly smart) teens who it looks like could anchor this film, and then kills almost all of them. It possibly could have done a slightly better job of showing the destruction that flying debris can cause, most of the danger does seem to come from being sucked off.
Some of the dialogue does come off a bit weird. There’s a lot of talk about how “weather has changed a lot and become more dangerous lately” but no discussion as to why. Like it’s so scared about upsetting certain (American) people that it dares not utter the words “Climate Change”. Other than that weird omission, the conversations feel real. That’s because the characters do too. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any characters from the original movie here at all, I didn’t even see any mention of them. I don’t mind that though as I don’t remember that much from the original, at one point a cow went wooosh. So I think it’s probably for the best that this doesn’t go full “Look kids, it’s the person from the original! Applaud!”, although it does feel like there is one character who was written with “let’s see if we can get Helen Hunt to come back” in mind.
I appreciate how they didn’t dumb the science down. The characters are all supposed to be intelligent and experienced in the field of tornados, so if they were talking to each other they wouldn’t dumb it down. Why would they? They wouldn’t explain the basics, they would talk as if everybody in the room already knows, because odds are they would. Most films wouldn’t do that, they’d write it to get the audience to understand it, which means the characters would be speaking like nobody with their expertise would talk to their peers.
To summarise; a surprisingly good experience, that’s completely tainted by a few seconds of character stupidity that makes it hard to truly love. That moment lingers over the film far too heavily to forget it. Which is a genuine shame, I haven’t witnessed a more damaging three-second incident since [paternity suit pending].
Troubled Productions 