“If you feel it…chase it.”

I saw it once while it blew through theaters, have watched it twice in the comfort of my home, and can confidently say that Twisters is the most entertaining film I’ve seen this year. It has everything I want in a Summer movie: proper character development, dialed down drama, careful comedy, and a pace that never loiters around or speeds through too quickly. I know this won’t be the “best movie” that I see in all of 2024, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t the one I immediately buy on Blu-Ray, add to my vast collection, and casually throw on every so often. And best of all, I left the theater remembering the character’s names. It’s shocking how important that basic Litmus test is for the staying power of a picture. In that regard, Twisters has two pretty and engaging pillars.

Twisters begins with brilliant storm chaser Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) experiencing great grief and trauma, flashes forward five years to her in NYC as a consultant of sorts, and finds her called back home to Oklahoma by her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) to combat a once in a generation storm season. Unbeknownst to Kate, Javi’s means are complicated by capitalistic interests, and her chasing with him is further confused upon meeting the cocksure Tyler (Glen Powell), a self-proclaimed “tornado wrangler” with a menagerie of a crew and YouTube channel that’s garnered literal grassroots followers. Despite some early misdirection, the two eventually bond over reading the breeze, the thrill of the chase, and the hope that a tornado will rise. The leads make frustration and longing gazes look like poetry and chemistry in motion. They’re two of the very best.

The choice of director in Lee Isaac Chung disappointed me during the initial announcement, only because so many independent filmmakers take on big projects without having any relationship to the material. Chung is accustomed to small-scale films, and most recently only broke out with the grounded and absolutely stunning Minari (one of 2020’s most overlooked films). I wasn’t sure if his style would translate to a Summer popcorn flick, but it’s safe to say that Twisters forced me to bite my own tongue. And his involvement makes so much sense in retrospect. Throughout Minari, Chung showed great reverence by capturing the pain and the beauty, the grit and the dirt of Arkansas, a sister to this picture’s Sooner State, and it feels like a movie made by someone who knows how to navigate and properly portray its people. It helps that Dan Mindel’s cinematography is so smooth and Benjamin Wallfich’s score is such a standout throwback.

It’s unfortunate that the abrupt last bit of the 3rd act here feels so inconsequential and diluted compared to the rest, and it seems as though a few bad studio notes were forced into the final cut. Some bad CGI (a derailed streetcar, I think?) and thoughtless action sequences suggest these parts were patched on rather than woven into the rest of the denim and fabric. Twisters falls just shy of blockbuster greatness. But I also must share that my heart is deeply nostalgic for the original. After long nights out at the local watering hole called The Thirsty Camel, we’d find our way back to my friend’s apartment above the bar, we’d eventually agree to pop in Twister on DVD, and more often than not would rewatch it again in the morning with a few more couch surfers. Twister is tied to a brief storm in my life, and Twisters is tied to an entirely new one. That they’re both so singular and so memorable is a testament to this consistent recipe for storytelling. It’s sweet, savory, somehow sage and always game. How can you resist getting sucked in?

“Sometimes the old ways are better than the new.”

Rating: 4.5 out of 5