Twisters

★★★½

I have now seen “Twisters” twice. For the initial watch, its country setting prompted me to experience it at the drive-in, clad in red plaid and a cowboy hat to watch some Oklahoma mayhem in the open night air. On rewatch, I ventured into uncharted territory with my first 4DX experience, where I was thrown around in my seat and assaulted with heavy wind, rain and fog effects. On one end of the spectrum, the drive-in was too stripped-back, reminding me exactly why an actual movie theatre will always be the ideal way to watch a movie you actually care about. On the other end of the spectrum, 4DX overdelivered on the immersive theatrical experience with distracting theme park ride gimmicks. So this will of course be a review of Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters,” but it will just as much be an exploration of how best to see it.

A sequel to 1996’s disaster movie classic “Twister” in title only, “Twisters” follows a group of young storm chasers who face a slew of intense tornadoes in the pursuit of learning how to limit their destructive capabilities. After a tense opening sequence that whisks her friends straight out of the film, “Twisters” catches up with meteorologist Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) five years on, as her former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) persuades the once storm chaser to run open-armed back to Oklahoma in the heart of Tornado Alley, USA to test new equipment that could dissipate intense storms. There, she is confronted by rival chaser and YouTube sensation Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his team of scrappy adventure-seekers. And it is at this point, with all the pieces now in place, that Lee Isaac Chung unleashes the relentless cyclone carnage.

Harkening back to the nineties summer blockbusters of its predecessor’s age, Chung’s high-thrill spectacle is endearingly cliched and wonderfully earnest. No tongue-in-cheek jabs or self-aware references here. Just pure, old-fashioned sincerity. Many narrative beats arrive entirely as expected — it’s not “will Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell ever get over their differences?” as much as it is simply “I can’t wait to get to the part where they’re working together” — and therein lies the joy. It’s not trying to pull one over on us, or subvert expectations to the detriment of satisfying emotional catharsis. It’s wearing its heart on its sleeve at a time of jaded cynicism in Hollywood blockbusters, like another recent Powell vehicle, “Top Gun: Maverick,” which similarly played in the sandbox of sweeping 80s/90s Hollywood romanticism. The drive-in setting evoked those feelings, too.

And make no mistake, for all its destructive force, “Twisters” is a palpably romantic film. Glen Powell would have fantastic chemistry with a tree stump, but here he is paired with the doe-eyed Daisy Edgar-Jones in a charmingly flirtatious dynamic. Where the romance lacks in depth and nuance, it makes up for in the wits and charms of its two performers. And, frankly, there’s something emotionally rousing about seeing the two of them race towards danger, or fend it off dramatically, together. You just wanna see those crazy kids make it.

But Lee Isaac Chung throws a lot in their path. “Twisters” is a disaster movie with a capital-D; enormous in scale, gripping in its immediacy and tangibility. No one feels entirely safe. One key sequence in the middle of the film sees a nighttime rodeo overturned by a surprise tornado, which violently rips through buildings and tosses cars into the air as our heroes desperately clutch what they can to keep from soaring into the sky. You don’t need 4DX to feel inside the whirlwind yourself, but it certainly helps. Strong winds rippled through my hair and light bursts of water droplets dashed across my face, my seat rattled and swung me back and forth. The gimmicks may have been distracting through the film’s opening sequence, but by now the film had whisked me out of the movie theatre entirely, and I was simply in the storm alongside them. 

In a bit of meta storytelling, the film’s finale pushes several of its key players to find shelter inside a movie theatre, where the screen wall is soon yanked backwards into the swirling abyss. All the ad’s missing is the 4DX logo in the corner.

Where the film stumbles, however, is in its contrivances and flat writing. In some respects, this feels reminiscent of the 1996 classic, but even if done as intended homage, it is a detriment that “Twisters” feels so airy and weightless. Its tropey-ness extends beyond the lovingly reminiscent to the territory of weak writing, where conflict between Kate and her longtime friend Javi feels awkwardly forced, and its commentary on how real-world disasters affect impoverished communities feels like a thesis statement without an argument. Its relentless science-talk is no help, either. The “Minari” filmmaker is at his best when painting a broad disaster epic against a grounded human story, but so much of the film’s dialogue is committed to impenetrable meteorology jargon. It perhaps adds a layer of believability to the proceedings, but informs little of character. Ultimately, I do not care how or why the tornado data-mapping tech works, I care how it motivates the story.

At the drive-in, even less of the story registered. The experience exuded an easygoing comfort that is, surprisingly, prevalent through much of the film’s non-twister segments, but it was an enormously distracting experience. Headlights occasionally blinded the screen, the audio from other vehicles echoed through the lot, and quite honestly, it’s easy to transform the whole thing into a social event at the points where the film loses you. Meanwhile, 4DX took me for a ride. I was truly in the passenger seat every time Javi violently jerked the storm-chaser truck around a corner; I was gently soaring over Oklahoma fields in stunning landscape shots; I was physically running alongside Kate and Tyler as pillars of wind and rain forcefully whipped the elements into my body. Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters” isn’t a perfect film, but it is the perfect summer blockbuster. An exuberant spectacle of Spielbergian movie-magic wonder that radiates an earnest sincerity too rarely seen nowadays. “If you feel it, chase it.” Well, if you’re chasing in 4DX, there’s no better way to feel it.