3 months ago
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Director Lee Isaac Chung crafts a semi-engaging film about survival but succumbs to the oldest of cliches to keep the narrative going read more
 "Glen Powell runs riot in a disaster movie that needed to be more twisted than tiring")
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Sasha Lane
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Language: English
Mercifully, it’s not as dramatic or depressing as the other disaster movies. Yes, Lee Isaac Chung’s new film Twisters is a reboot of the 1996 film Twister with some twists of its own. A bunch of meteorologists dare to do what they call ‘tame the tornado’ but are killed one after another. The only survivor, Kate (an impressive Daisy Edgar-Jones), moves to New York and bumps into an old ally who survived the storm too. Survival here is both literal and metaphorical. Destiny has given these two individuals another chance, but with new sets of conflicts and challenges.
And with new sets of conflicts and challenges, come new characters. Glen Powell as Tyler Owens is having the time of his life playing a reckless YouTuber who derives a high in between these remorseless tornados. Cinematographer Dan Mindel and the team handling VFX partly contribute in sucking us into the devastating world these guys are now used to. The visuals are far from bone-chilling, yet, there are fleeting adrenaline rushes. Unlike the original, the dynamic between the leads here is fresh and exciting. Two opposing schools of thinking come together to save the city from reoccurring disasters. In the original, this unfolded against the backdrop of an ailing marriage. There was a certain sense of duality in the persistence. Here, the people have nothing to lose except for others and their own lives.
But Twisters is bogged down by cliches and gratuitous writing. There are way too many scenes that add nothing to the story, like the conversation between Kate, her mother, and Tyler where they all reminisce the fearless girl’s childhood, or the done-to-death climax at the airport where the flight is obviously delayed or the heroine refused to fly due to love. But it isn’t a washout for sure. It’s partly gripping and one feels kicked to know who will be the last man or woman standing when the tornados rip apart the city.
“There is a blend of fear, fun, humour and thrill within those movies that I remember and I kept thinking about how to do that in this one. How do I have moments of fear but then suddenly shift to humour and things like that. It was the feeling (of those films) that I was after,” the director said recently. And the blend works mostly, there are dollops of mirth, especially in the conversation between Kate and Tyler, or even the eccentricities of his daredevil team. Glen Powell could very well be the star of the show, ably followed by a humane performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones only if the final product was less tiring and more twisted.
Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)
Twisters is releasing on 19th July
Working as an Entertainment journalist for over five years, covering stories, reporting, and interviewing various film personalities of the film industry see more
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English (US) ·