Twisters Review: Let This Roaring Sequel Take You for a Whirl

Back in 1996, Twister came tearing through the box office. It was a true summer blockbuster, thanks to magnificent cyclones created by state-of-the-art special effects. But computer-generated imagery has advanced since then, and at an accelerating speed. So let’s have a sequel!

And, sure enough, the tornadoes in Twisters have gotten a serious glow-up. They move with greater agility as they fling soil, cars, houses and folks up into the air with something like light-fingered élan. And this time you get to see a cyclone lit up from within by fireworks! It feels vaguely patriotic.

In the end, though, you may wonder whether all these twisters, now and in 1996, are actually better than the sepia cyclone from 1939's The Wizard of Oz. That was made of muslin, but audiences invested it with the poetic psychology of Judy Garland’s Dorothy. Maybe it was her projected anger at Miss Gulch? At her own colorless life in Kansas? It was a nightmare, not a pressure system.

Never mind: Twisters, fast, fleet and entertaining, will probably be a summer blockbuster too.

The story boils down to a face-off between two storm-chasers. Kate (Where the Crawdads Sing's Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a principled researcher who dreams of testing out a new chemical technique that would cause a cyclone to collapse like a cloudy soufflé.

Tyler (Hit Man’s Glen Powell) is a hotshot tornado “wrangler” with a YouTube following and a smile that dazzles, come rain or come shine.

He and Kate compete to see who’ll be first to reach the latest storm front, but over time they bond. Is love in the forecast?

Edgar-Jones is (so far) an under-appreciated actress whose naturalness nicely suits Kate’s down-to-earth honesty. But the film really needs Powell’s ingratiating star turn — his is the one performance on a scale large enough to stand up to all those special effects.

Twisters, it has to be said, doesn’t surpass the original Twister. It lacks that first film's playful humor, for one thing, as well as a sense, faint but distinctive, that the tornadoes roaring across the landscape move with personal malevolence — the Jaws shark whirling through air.

But Twisters hews closely to Twister’s adrenaline-spiking high points, and that will be enough for audiences.

No one cares whether Twisters reinvents the wheeling tornado. There’d have been no pressure to top Max Max: Fury Road with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga if the plot was driven by meteorological conditions. Am I right?

Twisters is in theaters now.