Jan de Bont's "Twister" (1996) was a diverting "summer thrill ride", said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph. Now we have a stand-alone sequel, directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari), and a film that could have been a "faintly desperate revival of an ageing blockbuster brand" turns out to be vastly better than the original. I am happy to report that "Twisters" is a "wholehearted, warm-blooded, meticulously crafted good time".
Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a meteorologist who is researching tornadoes in Oklahoma when one of them turns on her and her team, killing three of them. Five years on, her fellow survivor, Javi (Anthony Ramos), persuades her to come out of semi-retirement, and return to Oklahoma to monitor an especially virulent tornado season for the dodgy estate agency he is working for. But they're not the only storm chasers in town: Tyler (Glen Powell), a swaggering "tornado wrangler" with a million followers on YouTube, has also arrived to capitalise on the season. The film's formula is simple and winning: "everyday heroes you can't help but root for", enjoyable supporting turns (including from "Downton Abbey"'s Harry Hadden-Paton), and "light-touch direction" that "foregrounds" the human experience.
"Twisters" "does what it says on the tin, which is subject you to extremely bad weather over and over", said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. You may feel that "once you've seen one big storm, you've seen them all", but the film "never lets you off the hook, and is so furiously and incessantly loud that a doze is impossible. God knows I tried."
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Well, "I liked the original a lot" and I enjoyed this follow-up too, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. "Genuinely spectacular", and built around a "well-developed script", this is "classy" popcorn fare.
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