Film REVIEW: Twisters (2024) - ★★★

What’s worse than one monster tornado? Try two of them!

Here’s everything you need to know, from plot, trailer, SFX and age rating to the punishment endured by the cast on the Twisters movie set.

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Writer: Mark L. Smith, Joseph Kosinski

Stars: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Themes: Disaster, Storm Chaser, Tornado

Kate Carter, a retired tornado-chaser and meteorologist, is persuaded to return to Oklahoma to work with a new team and new technologies.

Serves as a standalone sequel to Twister (1996).

It received generally positive reviews from critics

In Cinemas Now

MIX UP REVIEWS:

Jan (Age 12) - ★★★1/2

"Mid film. I think this film has a very basic storyline. I think the idea of tornadoes being the main theme is cool though. I liked how the antagonist became the protagonist and visa versa, this made me think that the first impression a person makes in a film doesn't have to be similar the last impression they make. Which is nice...

Overall, an okay film but I'd recommend other films rather than this."

Have you seen it yet?

Twisters buzz - Why is everyone talking about the long-awaited Twister sequel?

This is a weather warning. There’s a tornado headed our way – so kiss your house goodbye, pile into your pickup and take shelter from Twisters.

As the long-awaited sequel to the $495 million-grossing Twister (1996), this meteorological disaster movie is set to blow you away on 17 July. Take it from screenwriter Mark L. Smith, who simply told Collider: “It’s a real wild ride.”

Is Twisters a sequel? Backstory and origins of Twisters 2024

Twisters is more of a close relation than a chronological sequel to the 1996 film. With none of the original cast – which starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as rogue storm-chasers – set to return, there’s no homework to do if you haven’t seen the OG.

Despite that, director Lee Isaac Chung (The Mandalorian, Minari) told EW he wanted to capture Twister’s spirit (“To me, it didn’t necessarily feel like a disaster movie, it felt like an adventure movie”) while stepping up the SFX to capture the apocalyptic terror of a tornado at full pelt.

“When the first Twister was released, I remember just being blown away by the trailer. I remember feeling how realistic that tornado looked. I’d never seen anything like that. I still remember that trailer, and I know that with this one, we need to try to top it.”

Twisters plot - What happens in the new Twisters movie?

Chances are, if you’re unlucky enough to see a tornado on the horizon, you’d run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. But that’s not how storm-chasers are wired.

In the original Twister, Paxton and Hunt’s characters risked a swirly death as they pursued a violent tornado across Oklahoma to test their revolutionary ‘Dorothy’ weather prediction device.

Now, in Twisters, we meet a new generation with no instinct for self-preservation. Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) represents the more thoughtful, scientifically minded end of the scale, eager to test out new tech she believes could stop tornadoes in their tracks. Then there’s Tyler Owens (Glen Powell - The Dark Knight Rises): a showboating social media yee-haw and self-styled ‘tornado wrangler’ who gets off on the danger of it all. His motto? “If you feel it – chase it!”

The pair are stark opposites with contrasting styles, but when the historic tornado tearing up the state splits into two natural disasters, Kate and Tyler face the choice of working together – or being slurped up into the sky along with all the farmhouses and furniture.

Cast of Twisters - Who stars in Twisters 2024?

Daisy Edgar-Jones has shown her nuanced acting chops in dramas like Where the Crawdads Sing. Now, the 26-year-old British actress pulls a whole new persona from her dramatic toolkit as the reluctant action hero with wind turbines smashing through her windshield.

“I sort of read the scenes,” she told Entertainment Weekly, “and then forgot that actually when we were doing them, what it would be like to be pelted with rain and chunks of ice and hail and wind.”

Having graced Top Gun: Maverick with his megawatt smile and gravity-defying swagger, it seems like Glen Powell was born to play ‘cocksure’. Now, the Texan actor is the perfect casting as Twisters’ bullish alpha.

“If you would've told me that I would get to be in a Twister movie when I grew up,” he told interviewer Patrick Gomez, “I'd say to myself, ‘You're on the right track’. It's as cool as it gets.”

As for comic relief, Twisters also features Anthony Ramos (of Hamilton, In the Heights , Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Godzilla: King of the Monsters fame), who plays Kate’s storm-chasing partner Javi.

Twisters movie shoot - How good does the new Twister movie look?

Director Lee Isaac Chung grew up in the Midwest and remembers cowering in storm shelters, so when he saw 1996’s Twister at the cinema as a teenager, it felt all too real.

A lifetime later, when it came to filming the Twisters movie, the director insisted on shooting on location in Oklahoma, not faking it with a Hollywood sound stage.

"I told everyone this is something that we have to do,” Chung told the Associated Press.

“We can’t just have blue screens. We’ve got to be out there on the roads with our pickup trucks and in the green environments where this story actually takes place. We got the shots we needed. The skies were perfect because it looked like a tornado. We got everyone out of there safely. And a tornado actually touched the ground after we filmed it.”

Twisters trivia - What's an interesting fact about Twister 2?

Simulating a real tornado – whose wind speeds can be as high as 300 mph – is no mean feat for a filmmaker.

But Lee Isaac Chung took ‘windswept’ to a whole new level in Twisters by blasting his stars with actual jet-plane engines.

Twisters accuracy - How much scientific basis is in the new Twister movie?

With climate change on all our minds, director Lee Isaac Chung wanted to root his movie in fact, and Twisters feels even more relevant than the original.

“We do highlight the idea and the fact that, environmentally speaking, storms have become more unpredictable,” the director told the Associated Press. “Tornadoes have become more unpredictable as well. That’s just hard science. We also address the fact that the technology around what we can understand about tornadoes is growing as well.”

Twisters age rating - Who can watch the Twister sequel?

Look, there’s no getting around the fact that some people in this movie are going to be sucked screaming into the void.

While the official age rating is 12A, Twisters is more tense and exciting than horrific, and the whole family should be able to cope with this white-knuckle actioner.

Twisters is out now in cinemas. After all, the biggest tornado in history deserves an XXL cinema screen, with surround sound that feels like the roof is about to be ripped off.

As Glen Powell says: “I think it’s really going to keep the audience on the edge of their seat.”

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