Twisters (2024)
Twisters isn’t exactly a sequel to Jan de Bont’s beloved 1996 tornado spectacle, its more of a remake-quel with, again, impressive visual effects and eardrum-rattling sound design placed around the story of a bunch of thrill-seeking hillbilly scientists who are about as deep as the puddle in your driveway. It gives you what you want, but you have to fight the temptation not to quote Bugs Bunny by asking “Was this trip really necessary?” This may be the most needless retread since that Poltergeist remake a few years ago.
The movie has an idea at its core but it’s so busy trying to be a lot of different things that it never really has time to settle on any one of those things for too long. We begin with Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), an Oklahoma research scientist who believes that she has a way to not only track these prairie land twisters but to clip their wings before they become the terror of the local communities. Her first test leads to a double-tragedy and she gives up and heads for the safer waters of New York City.
But, as these things go, the champ is pulled out of retirement by her old workmate Javi (Anthony Ramos) because the menace is still at large. Returning to the Midwest after five years, she finds that the game has changed. Those who are serious about tracking and researching tornadoes now have to contend with the volley loud, obnoxious rock and roll rednecks and thrill seekers looking to make a name for themselves on YouTube.
What is disappointing is that this is an idea that the movie doesn’t stick with for very long. There is the potential to deal with the difficulty of science being crushed by those who just want exposure, but it is never explored, never dealt with in a real way. Out of the crop of thrill seekers Kate finds her love interest, in the obnoxiously charming Tyler (Glenn Powell) who eventually settles down enough to let her know that he’s in this research game because – well, shucks – he cares about the folks ‘round these parts who are menaced by the beast. That doesn’t explain the plate on the front of his truck, a tornado with bull horns, or why he needs to blast rock and roll during the chase, or shoot fireworks into the funnel. Or how he came up with a way to anchor his truck to the ground in a way that, I think, would cause more problems than it would solve.
I am tempted to just call Twisters dumbbell entertainment and leave it at that, but after a promising start, I got a little bored. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Twister but at least that movie had a forward momentum. It had a trajectory. It had something we could mildly care about. This sequel (or whatever it is) kind of meanders. There are tornadoes. There’s the love story between Tyler and Kate. There’s her research. There’s her drama over the tragedy. But there’s never a measure of connecting these things into a cohesive whole. If you stop to think about this movie for one minute, you’re finished.