Twisters (2024)
There is a nice surprise waiting in the credits of Twisters, and it is the kind of surprise that makes you sit up a little straighter in your seat. This giant, deafening summer tornado movie was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the man behind Minari, one of the most tender and quietly devastating films of recent years. That is not remotely where you would expect a blockbuster about chasing killer storms to spring from, and yet it turns out to be a shrewd, inspired bit of hiring.
This is a belated follow-up to the 1996 Twister, a film that half the country, mine included, seemed to own on VHS at one point. I have warm, slightly fuzzy memories of that one, the kind you get from a film you watched too many times as a kid on a slightly dodgy tape. Chung takes everything I remember about the original and cranks it up to eleven. The storms are bigger, the effects are immeasurably better, and there is a smart, modern seam running through it about storm-chasing as social-media spectacle. That last bit gives the film a bit of genuine texture, something to chew on between the chaos. It reminded me, in a loose way, of how Nightcrawler used its thriller mechanics to say something pointed about the hunger for content at any cost. Twisters is nowhere near as dark or as sharp as that film, but the instinct to make the cameras part of the story is a smart one.
The cast, it must be said, is carried by one man. Glen Powell is comfortably the best thing in this film, all easy charisma as a cocky online tornado wrangler who treats the whole enterprise like a live performance. It is the same effortless movie-star quality that made him pop in Top Gun: Maverick, and he is going to be enormous if he is not already. There is a loose, swaggering confidence to him that is genuinely difficult to teach. Daisy Edgar-Jones, sadly, does not hold up her end for me. As the lead she feels a shade too slight, and a stronger presence across from Powell might have lifted the whole thing a notch. The chemistry between them is fine but not electric, and with a different pairing you could imagine this being something closer to a classic of the genre. But then, and I mean this with real affection, you are not here for the acting.
What you are here for is spectacle, and on that count Twisters absolutely delivers. The set-pieces are vast and genuinely thrilling, the sort of big-screen, grip-the-armrest filmmaking that earns the trip out of the house. There is one sequence in particular, set inside what I can only describe as a very bad place to be during a tornado, that had me properly tense in a way that summer blockbusters do not always manage. Chung directs action with more spatial clarity than you might expect from someone whose previous work was so intimate and still, and that is no small thing.
The plot is thin. The science is absolute nonsense. None of it matters a jot. The film knows precisely what it is, a ride, and it gives you a belter of one. It has a little of the same DNA as something like Point Break, that particular flavour of high-octane entertainment where you accept the absurdity as part of the deal and just let yourself be swept along. I will hold off ranking Twisters against the original until I have finally given that the long-overdue rewatch it deserves. But as pure summer entertainment, this is about as much fun as the multiplex has to offer right now.
Three and a half stars, and one I would cheerfully watch again on the biggest screen I could find.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2026-08-19
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
