‘Twisters’ Review: The Storms Deliver, but the Emotions Skim By

Twisters is a disaster movie that knows what it wants to be. It wants to be a sequel to Twister (1996), a modern update of the storm-chaser genre, and a spectacle that earns its $155 million budget. It mostly gets there, but it leans on spectacle and momentum while leaving the emotional stakes behind.

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate Carter, a storm chaser who survived an EF5 tornado five years earlier. Glen Powell plays Tyler Owens, a YouTube star known as the “Tornado Wrangler” who comes to Oklahoma to capitalize on a predicted outbreak. The film throws them together with their crews in the path of multiple converging storm systems, and the tagline sums up the whole premise: “Chase. Ride. Survive.”

Trailer, via Universal Pictures.

Kate, Tyler, and the Oklahoma Outbreak

The film opens with Kate’s old team — Javi, Addy, Praveen, and Jeb — launching barrels of sodium polyacrylate beads into a tornado to reduce its intensity. The experiment goes wrong, and Addy, Praveen, and Jeb die while Kate and Javi survive. Five years later, Kate works at a NOAA office in New York City until Javi offers her a one-week position with his team to test a new 3D tornado scanning system using phased-array radar.

Tyler’s crew is the other side of this coin. Boone, Dani, Dexter, Lily, and British journalist Ben arrive from Arkansas with Tyler to capture the action. The film sets up a clear rivalry between the two groups: Kate dismisses Tyler and his team as glory hounds, while Tyler sees Kate’s team as stodgy professionals who refuse to share their footage.

The setup works. The film knows how to build tension between these two groups, and it keeps the audience in the middle, cheering for both sides even as it makes clear that only one team can survive.

The Storms of Oklahoma

The storms themselves are the real star of Twisters. The film tracks an EF1 tornado that touches down in a wind farm, then splits into a satellite tornado that reaches EF3 strength and destroys the third scanner. The destruction is relentless and convincing, and the film uses practical effects alongside digital ones to ground the chaos.

“Chase. Ride. Survive.”

The tagline captures the film’s approach. It is a movie that asks you to keep up, not to sit back and watch. The chases are frantic, the storms are massive, and the scale of the destruction is consistent throughout.

The Cast Holds the Chaos

The ensemble cast is the film’s strongest element. Edgar-Jones plays Kate with a quiet, controlled intensity that anchors the chaos around her. Powell’s Tyler is a more cartoonish figure, but he brings energy and charisma to the role. Anthony Ramos as Javi and Brandon Perea as Boone round out the lead crews, and the supporting cast — Maura Tierney as Cathy, Harry Hadden-Paton as Ben, Sasha Lane as Lily, Daryl McCormack as Jeb, Kiernan Shipka as Addy, Nik Dodani as Praveen, and David Corenswet as Scott — gives the film a human scale that the action never fully erases.

The film’s biggest weakness is its pacing. At 123 minutes, it moves quickly, but it also skims over character development and emotional beats in favor of the next chase scene. The death of Addy, Praveen, and Jeb is treated as a plot point rather than a loss, and the film never gives Kate’s grief the space it needs.

The film also struggles with its tone. It wants to be a serious disaster movie, but the presence of a YouTube star like Tyler Owens keeps pulling it toward a more cartoonish register. The film’s tagline — “Chase. Ride. Survive” — is a promise it mostly keeps, but the tone keeps shifting between terror and spectacle.

The Sequel’s Long Journey

Twisters is a standalone sequel to Twister (1996), which starred Helen Hunt. Talks for a sequel began in 2020, with Joseph Kosinski pitching an idea to Warner Bros. and Helen Hunt expressing interest in a follow-up that was ultimately rejected. Several directors were approached before Lee Isaac Chung was hired in December 2022.

The production history is worth noting. The cast joined in early-2023, and filming took place around Oklahoma that summer, with a brief hiatus due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. The film premiered at the Empire Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2024, and was released internationally by Warner Bros. Pictures on July 10. It reached the United States and Canada by Universal Pictures on July 19.

Verdict

Twisters is a solid, if uneven, disaster movie. It is best when it is focused on the storms and the chase, and worst when it tries to slow down and let the characters breathe. The film’s budget was $155 million, and it grossed over $372 million worldwide, which is a strong commercial result for a film that was rejected in its early stages and then brought to life.

The film’s score on the aggregator is 6.5 out of 10, which matches its middle-of-the-road quality. It is not a masterpiece, but it is not a failure either. It is a well-made disaster movie that knows its audience and delivers what it promises.

The film’s ending is a good example of this. Kate and Tyler’s crews survive the final storm, but the film does not linger on their survival. It cuts away quickly, leaving the audience with a sense of relief and a reminder that the storm-chaser lifestyle is not for the faint of heart.

Twisters is a film that understands its own genre. It knows that a disaster movie is not about the characters, but about the disaster. The film is at its best when it is in the moment, and at its weakest when it tries to be something else. It is worth watching for the spectacle, and it is worth remembering for the storm.

Daisy Edgar-Jones · disaster movie · Glen Powell · storm chasers · tornadoes