Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the 2024 disaster movie, Twisters, with its numerous tornadoes dealing death and destruction all over Oklahoma. But its 1996 predecessor, Twister, holds a lofty place on my list of all-time favorite movies. Much of that has to do with its amazing cast, featuring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And its special effects were excellent for a film nearly thirty years in the rearview.

Twisters has been listed as a sequel—or a reboot, or a remake—of Twister. I suppose that has more to do with marketing than anything. The only obvious link had to do with the first team of storm chasers in the new movie having an apparatus called Dorothy V, which contained sensors designed to be sucked up into a tornado to gather data. In the first film, three failed attempts led to success with Dorothy IV. Aside from that, not even a cameo, only a small role for Bill Paxton’s son.

CHASE. RIDE. SURVIVE.

With that tagline, here is a brief overview of Twisters. In Oklahoma a group of young storm chasers, led by the brilliant, ambitious Kate Carter, seeks to launch barrels of a chemical into a tornado with the goal of lessening its intensity, as well as to land a grant that will enable them to continue their research. But the amount of the chemical is too small to be effective, especially when the twister unexpectedly grows in intensity. Three members of the team are killed. Kate survives but is traumatized. A team member named Javi, who had been watching from afar, also survives.

Kate and Tyler do not exactly hit it off.

Fast forward five years. Kate is in New York City working for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) when Javi, now employed by a mobile tornado radar company called Storm Par, offers her a one-week job testing a new scanning system. Kate refuses, but then relents when she sees a news report of an Oklahoma town destroyed without warning. With her help, Javi says, they could save lives in the future. (A similar theme from the first film.)

THE TORNADO WRANGLER

Kate joins the Storm Par team in Oklahoma during what appears to be an active tornado season. These are all top-notch professionals with advanced degrees. Not so a second team of “good ol’ boys and gals” from Arkansas, a gung-ho group led by a popular YouTube storm chaser named Tyler Owens—known as the Tornado Wrangler. Sparks initially fly between Kate and Tyler. That will eventually change, as will the realization that neither of the two teams are what they appear to be.

“Can we get any closer?”

In the meantime there is plenty of carnage to go around, with twisters popping up everywhere. Kate, still traumatized by what happened five years earlier, has a panic attack during the first confrontation and is unable to help Javi set up the scanning system. But subsequent circumstances will see her grow a spine and do some remarkable things.

I have to admit one bit of personal bias that brought the otherwise entertaining Twisters down a few notches for me. It had to do with the soundtrack. Plain and simple: I do not like country music, and there was plenty of it. That said, I’m always happy to watch a film full of weather-related death and destruction. (What does that say about me!)