‘Twisters:’ Chung’s Massively Entertaining Film Blends Hollywood Theatrics, Love For the Natural World

I mean it as a full-on compliment when I say I knew exactly how Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters would begin.

I took my son, home from college for the summer, to my local critics’ screening. Over dinner, we talked about the film, and I made a bet with him. I wagered that Chung’s film would begin with a character looking up at a stormy sky in a field of tall grass. There would be thunderstorms in the distance, ominously signaling the approach of a deadly storm. I also theorized there would be a weathervane, slowly spinning at first but quickly increasing in its intensity.

I mostly nailed it. There wasn’t a weathervane, although I might quibble that a dreamcatcher almost works in its place.

I don’t consider that a slam on the film or to the director, though. Instead, it’s a clear sign that Chung, whose last theatrical film Minari similarly offered characters ruminating in the natural world, fits this material in unexpected ways. Where so many directors tried and failed with bringing their personal style to blockbuster filmmaking (see: Chloé Zhao and The Eternals), Chung gently infers his personal touches, his love of the natural world, in this elegantly constructed and extremely entertaining crowdpleaser.

Twisters introduces the audience to two seemingly polar opposites. Daisy Edgar-Jones’s Kate Carter leverages an innate sense for weather phenomena in her scientific pursuits. Glen Powell’s Tyler Owens leverages his matinee idol good looks and extreme charisma to capture weather footage for his YouTube channel. Of course we know that neither will remain rigid in their construction and opposites will attract. But that’s hardly the point.

Twisters essentially becomes a road trip film through the heartland as Chung’s camera catches scene after scene of gorgeous landscapes soon to be ripped apart by the fury of epic tornadoes. And that’s why audiences come to a film like Twisters. On that level, it spectacularly delivers. There are moments of incredible destruction that offer true, heart-racing terror. Lives are lost. There are stakes in this film, which sells it in ways that even the original film didn’t match.

There are minor quibbles here and there, of course. Some characters are introduced in a deliberately obnoxious way only to magically transform into a more palatable and sympathetic crew. There are still some moments where characters defy the fury of a F5 tornado, although not quite as egregious as lashing two characters to a water pipe with a leather belt and having them survive a massive tornado without damage as in the original. But still, this is blockbuster filmmaking at its peak thanks to Chung’s deft handling of the material and inescapable affection for the natural world. He guides his actors through the material to deliver grounded, committed performances. He’s also unafraid of theatrics, staging a climactic tornado sequence in a small-town movie theater — a touch I absolutely loved. Plus, surprisingly, he delivers a film that literally anyone in America could enjoy.

Twisters is truly a, what they used to call, 4-quadrant film for the entire family, both coasts and everywhere in between. Rush to see this in a theater and lavish in accomplished, big-budget, Hollywood filmmaking at its finest.

Twisters is playing in theaters nationwide.