If it was a triumph of anything, the 1996 movie Twister was a triumph of special effects. For the first time ever, we got to see realistic tornadoes depicted on screen. We got to see these ominous cone-shaped vortexes cutting against a real sky, and cutting through barns, sheds and houses. We got to see the refuse violently scattered like so much pulp from a woodchipper. We got to see cows tossed about in the storm’s fury, their legs stabbing for purchase that wasn’t there and never would be. (It was funny, even though we knew those cows totally bought it when they hit the ground.) Really, though, the word “triumph” was not an accurate descriptor for anything in Twister.

Fast forward 28 years, and we get essentially the same movie but without the awe factor. Since Twister came out, we’ve seen “realistic” versions of just about everything you can imagine through digital effects, to the point that any improvement on the previous version is almost impossible to measure. Even if the twisters in Twisters look significantly better than those in the original, it’s kind of akin to the difference between first seeing realistic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and every subsequent instance of seeing realistic dinosaurs. The first time was everything. The subsequent times, significantly more shrug-worthy.

And so a reheat of old IP like Twisters would need a really compelling take, a really unexpected story, something game-changing to register. It doesn’t have these things, and it doesn’t really register. When we first heard they were making another Twister movie, the initial reaction “Really??” was followed by the amended reaction “Oh, that might be cool.” It’s not that cool. We were right the first time.

In a setup that will feel quite familiar, ambitious young meteorology student Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is testing a chemical process she’s concocted that she hopes will change the temperature inside a tornado and cause it to dissipate. She’s trying to get a grant to further her research. But being next to a tornado on the Oklahoma plains always carries the potential for tragedy, and three other young scientists, including her boyfriend, are carried away to their deaths before the experiment can yield conclusive results.

Five years later, she’s continuing to hide from this trauma while working at a meteorology desk job in New York City, where nary a twister strikes. She’s approached by the other surviving member of the science experiment gone wrong, Javi (Anthony Ramos), who is chasing tornadoes in order to get a 3D mapping of them via devices triangulated around the funnel. He needs a person with Kate’s infallible instincts, and following the requisite polite declines, she agrees to do it after another tornado reduces another small Oklahoma town to a debris field.

They’re not the only ones pursuing the unusually fertile Oklahaoma twister season. YouTube cowboy hunk Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) wants to entertain his followers with footage proving that fireworks can be shot up into a tornado and other such feats of derring do. Of course Kate and Tyler are going to chafe against each other, of course he’s going to prove himself more serious than that, and of course Javi is up to something more suspicious than he seems, as you would know if only from his stern and humourless sidekick (David Corenswet).

Twisters ticks all the boxes, except the one next to the question “Is it good.” Lee Isaac Chung is the director of this movie, and the only apparent reason for that is that he is from the neighbouring state of Arkansas. The director had a best picture-nominated movie a few years ago in Minari, based on his family’s experience immigrating from South Korea to Arkansas, but he’s not a logical match for this material. That’s not to say that Twisters would be a better or worse movie if it were directed by someone else. Similar to the indie directors selected to direct Marvel movies, Chung discharges his duties perfectly competently.

Twisters is one of those movies that is probably a mild recommendation or a mild disappointment depending on the mood you’re in. It’s got light tornado interactions scored by up-tempo country music, where you know everyone is going to flirt with danger and come out the other side, and it’s got serious scenes where we’re meant to ponder the death and property destruction among good Oklahomans. (This movie has a heartland pro-America bias that rears its head from time to time, as these rugged plains are significantly privileged over the soulless and tornado-less Big City.)

There is also a ragtag bunch of other stormchasers — which include such unlikely candidates as Tunde Adebimpe of the band TV on the Radio and Katy O’Brian, recently of Love Lies Bleeding – that approximate the similar group in the 1996 film. Glen Powell is super charismatic as always, though perhaps Edgar-Jones doesn’t make quite the impression she’s made elsewhere.

“Taming” tornadoes – that’s a term Kate prefers to “killing” – is probably a legitimate scientific pursuit akin to minimising the damage caused by earthquakes, but you get the sense that the difficulty of predicting when they occur means that any remediation will always be too little, too late. Except, you get that sense only from being a logical person living in the real world, not from the movie Twisters. In Twisters, Kate and her various colleagues and rivals come up against no fewer than five tornadoes – six if you count the “twins” they see at one point, which give the title an additional meaning – in a week on the ground in Oklahoma. At least they look realistic.

 

Twisters is currently playing in cinemas.