Twisters Review : A New Breathtaking Experience On The Same Old Formula

Twisters Review : Lee Isaac Chung brings a standalone sequel to Twister (1996), with the old formula but a new team and new teach-friendly elements. We have the same setup built into modernity, while the screenplay blindly follows the footprints of 1996's disaster flick. "You don't face your fears, you ride them," has to be the best line in the entire movie, but sadly, the character who says it hardly does anything like that in the last quarter of the film. Twisters still manages to bring big-screen entertainment and keeps you hooked for two hours. That's one good thing about it—it doesn't bore you at all. But does that mean it's a good film? I don't think so.

Following in the footsteps of the original, Twisters takes you into the life of Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who loses three of her best friends in an encounter with a tornado during her college days. Five years later, hopeless and sorrowful Kate is working at a weather department in New York. She is visited by Javi (Anthony Ramos), the only second person after her to survive the tornado last time, and is asked to come back to Okalahoma. Javi has a groundbreaking new tracking system, and he needs Kate to complete his mission, which is supposedly going to save many lives. She soon crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a charming but reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures, giving himself the title of Storm Wrangler. As storm season intensifies, Kate, Tyler, and their competing teams find themselves in a fight for their lives as multiple systems converge over central Oklahoma.

Those who have seen Twister(1996) can identify the adaptation of the scenes in a new style. Almost 90% of the film comes from the prequel, which actually looked somewhat groundbreaking back in time. Instead of an open theater, we have a packed cinema hall here. Instead of an ex-wife and a new girlfriend, we have a girl with two wannabe boyfriends (three, if you count the dead one). In that film, the first attempt at breaking the tornado fails, and the leading lady blames her past trauma for that. You'll see the exact replication of those scenes with different events. From underestimating the tornado to it becoming large and shifting towards the town, all those cliches from the OG flick are copied and pasted on a new wall of Jericho. It's fun sometimes because you can predict things, and it's really exciting to see all those things happening on the screen that you have already assumed in your mind. You see, even a predictable plot can be entertaining too—sometimes. But for how long? Definitely not the entire two hours. Twisters falters there. The screenplay never gets dull, despite slow bits after every 15 minutes, and that has to be the only thing you carry home.

The performance of Daisy Edgar-Jones was decent, and she looked really beautiful in every frame. It's a pleasant thing to watch a lady leading from the front, but did they really need that love triangle stuff? In the OG flick, it was a simple matter of divorce and a new girlfriend. Here, you won't see any such bonding. Glen Powell is charming, but the performance is nothing beyond a certain point. For me, Anthony Ramos will forever remain the In the Heights boy, so I didn't really see any potential in his character here. Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Harry Hadden-Paton, Nik Dodani, Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka, David Corenswet, and others have done okay in those supporting roles.

Twisters is definitely a visual spectacle. It can best be viewed in IMAX; sadly, our screening ratio wasn't fit for IMAX, so the experience wasn't very helpful. Yet, those destroying visuals of tornadoes and breathtaking attacks did look scary. Some flying soccers are enchanting too. The sound design is fine, and the cinematography is very good. Okalhama is so green, fresh, and beautiful to see through cinematographer Dan Mindel's lens. Terilyn A. Shropshire's editing lacks skills. You can't really have those thin conversions coming in to spoil the momentum after a huge, explosive scene. It destroys people's engaging experience. Twisters has so many dull moments in between, and they look completely unnecessary. Speaking of Lee Isaac Chung's direction, I think his attempts were fine. The impact may not be as great as Twister, but you see, it's a benchmark for him as well as for us viewers. You can't just stop recalling the 1996 flick and take a look at the standalone sequel as a fresh film because that film has set a certain benchmark for disaster genre movies in your mind. Twisters, as a sequel, doesn't attempt anything new but definitely tries to update the old formula with new technology. It succeeds at a few points, misses some. Still, a watchable affair.