Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Twisters’ on Peacock, in Which Glen Powell Charms His Way Through An Entertaining Throwback Extravaganza

I’m happy to report that Twisters (now streaming on Peacock, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) doesn’t – and I apologize in advance – suck or blow. Credit director Lee Isaac Chung (who proves his summer-tentpole acumen after helming 2020’s tremendous indie drama Minari, and an episode of The Mandalorian) and headliner Glen Powell (who’s a superstar now thanks to Anyone But You and Hit Man) for making sure the movie is a thoroughly viable bit of escapism. The movie’s a sort-of follow-up to 1996 hit Twister in the sense that both movies are about terrifying Oklahoma tornadoes, but aside from a handful of Easter-egg references, there’s no connection to Helen Hunt or Bill Paxton’s characters. Is that disappointing? Maybe to a few of you, but frankly, the fact that a “franchise” film stands on its own in modern-day Hollywood feels like a miracle on par with, I dunno, surviving an incredibly close encounter with an F5 tornado.

TWISTERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: And that’s exactly what happens to Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones): She survives an incredibly close encounter with an F5 tornado. Ain’t that just like the lead character in a tornado movie? Always finding a way to not die. We meet her and her crew of college researchers as they try to choke out an Oklahoma twister by making it suck up several barrels full of gloop (it’s like the stuff in diapers, one character helpfully explains). It goes, shall we say, poorly. The gloop doesn’t work and only she and Javi (Anthony Ramos of In the Heights fame) make it beneath the overpass in time – her BF goes whoosh, never to be seen again – and then five years pass and Kate has shifted from gutsy ’nado chaser to boring person in suit pants at the National Weather Service offices in New York. It’s understandable considering the trauma and survivor’s guilt she carries, but her homegrown sixth-sense “gift” for sniffing out tornadoes is being wasted. The pantsuit life just ain’t for her.

But Javi comes knocking. He’s put together a crack unit of storm chasers who triangulate radar stations – there’s few things more cinematic than science people TRIANGULATING things – on tornadoes so they can study them. Of course, Kate’s reluctant to go back to Oklahoma, where her mom (Maura Tierney) lives, her mom who Wishes She’d Call More Often. But sitting in an office staring at radar doesn’t save lives like some hard, pipe-hittin’ in-the-field TRIANGULATION might, so she’s eventually persuaded. Next thing you know, she’s back home during a wild Oklahoma tornado week – think Shark Week, but with less teeth and more climate change implications – very tentatively sitting in a truck and telling Javi and his crew which direction to go in order to get close enough to a tornado and not get killed by it. She’s very good at this. It’s worth noting that one of Javi’s crew is played by David Corenswet, who’s going to be Superman next year, but unlike Superman, his character in this movie gives off some serious fartknocker vibes. And that’s all I’ll say about that. No spoilers, y’know.

At this point, you’re like, WHERE THE HELL IS GLEN POWELL? Patience. Good things come to those, etc. etc. He makes a grand entrance, too, playing Tyler Owens, a yee-haw YouTuber whose misfit crew films his tornado-chasing escapades in an armored pickemup truck that blasts obnoxious country songs and pulls over so he can hock T-shirts emblazoned with his face and the phrase NOT MY FIRST TORNADEO to his adoring fans. As if that isn’t Douche City enough, Tyler nearly runs Kate and Javi off the road as they pursue a rumbling storm, just because, and then he drives right into the tornado so he can literally anchor the truck to the ground with a pair of mega-drills and launch fireworks into the swirling winds – and watch the views and likes pour in like beers down a cowboy’s throat, yee-haw.

Consider the competition established, and the romantic tension between a noisy shitkicker and the bookish girl. But Tyler’s no dummy. He knows that chasing tornadoes is “part science, part religion,” and he doesn’t bite when Kate tries to bait-and-switch him on whether one should chase the storm to the east or the storm to the west. (She uses a criteria I dub the Dandelion Method, in which she stares wistfully at the horizon and picks up a dandelion and watches which way the fluff blows. Science or religion? Your guess is as good as mine.) It’s fate, I tell you, fate, that they may eventually wring a little rom-com out of this script. But Tornado Week is so intense – it’s just one after the other after the other around here! – they can’t even go on a date to a rodeo without nearly getting murdered by nature. There’s also a shot of Powell standing in some smoldering remnants of a tornado-smashed town, and you’d swear the smoke was coming off him. Can Kate resist? We all hope she can’t!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This joint is lousy with Wizard of Oz references. Thankfully, Twisters is far better than The Day After Tomorrow or Into the Storm. And I haven’t seen such intense ’nado action since Pa Kent got pointlessly devoured by one in Man of Steel.

Performance Worth Watching: With a single sparkling grin, Powell could put the fun in any funeral. He has a wispy-thin character to play here, but his ubercharisma makes the movie a scintilla or two more enjoyable than many other FX spectaculars.

Memorable Dialogue: A couple of memorable bits from a reasonably witty script:

The Corenswet fartknocker ain’t so sure about Kate’s methods: “I guess we’re listening to dandelions now.”

Tyler’s M.O.: “You don’t face your fears – you ride ’em.”

Sex and Skin: None: TBGSABBTTDASABOYO: Too Busy Getting Sucked And Blown By Tornadoes To Do Any Sucking And Blowing Of Your Own.

Our Take: Twisters is good old-fashioned highly entertaining popcorn-flick bullshit. It puts spectacle at the forefront, sidesteps real-world plausibility (science is good, but schmience is more fun!) and avoids saying anything of substance – e.g., modern extrapolations on the effects of psychological trauma or climate change – in lieu of adhering to the tenets of Summer Movies 101: big, loud, ridiculous, amusing and led by a bona-fide movie star whose swagger compensates for a heaping pile of shortcomings. (And yes, I’m implying that the film’s other lead, Edgar-Jones, doesn’t match Powell in terms of sheer wattage. She’s Just Fine here, nothing more.)

Those considering watching Twisters at home should know that it’s a Biggest Screen Possible-slash-The Louder The Better movie. It’s not going to be as transporting or all-sense consuming on your phone or laptop, or even your 65-incher – and I’m not just talking about Powell in sunglasses and a cowboy hat, one thumb in his jeans pocket, beaming like he owns the place (which he does). Chung knows action sequences are the most valuable currency in this context, and he makes sure they’re exceptional, more than just cheap CG and shaky-cam nonsense, and doled out at the proper intervals – as often as possible, of course. 

The director concocts a memorably destructive opening set piece, a twin-tornado pageant on an Okie plain and a doozy of a nighttime cyclone raid, easing in and out of increasingly intense situations that are, for lack of a better word, fun, without sacrificing the sense of high-stakes peril. (Are we truly concerned with the well-being of these characters? Eh, kind of.) Audio and visual effects are terrifyingly effective as our protags barrel headlong into danger, their vehicles jolted by triple-digit winds and battered with debris; the overall effect is immediate and enveloping enough to drown out the plot’s plausibility issues in the howling gale. 

And I couldn’t help but love the final sequence set in a movie theater. Isn’t that what a film critic is supposed to say? I mean, the ’nado rips the wall bearing the screen right off the building, so the helpless Oklahomans inside can look at a massive grandaddy of a granddaddy of a tornado through a big rectangle-shaped hole: Hey, that’s exactly what we’re doing! The self-awareness Chang deploys isn’t winking, but it’s knowing, and he strikes the perfect tone for a thriller-comedy that skillfully uses modern techniques to harken back to the better ’90s extravaganzas. 

Our Call: Full stop: Twisters is dumb fun. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.