CHASE. RIDE. SURVIVE.

Five years after a storm that almost killed her, meteorologist Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) agrees to join a team of storm chasers in Oklahoma during a tornado season that gets increasingly worse.

For some reason, it took 30 years to get a sequel to Twister (1996) made, but it’s a satisfying thrill-ride. Follows the formula of the original a bit too closely, perhaps, but has plenty of gripping tornado sequences and a likable cast, especially Glen Powell as a cocky adventurer with a YouTube following.

Targeting a heartland audience, the film finds smart ways to work climate change into the story, without preaching.

2024-U.S. 122 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung. Screenplay: Mark L. Smith. Story: Joseph Kosinski. Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones (Kate Cooper), Glen Powell (Tyler Owens), Anthony Ramos (Javi), Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Harry Hadden-Paton, Kiernan Shipka, David Corenswet. 

Trivia: Co-produced by Frank Marshall; co-executive produced by Steven Spielberg. At one point, Helen Hunt offered to direct a sequel to Twister.

Last word: “I’d [tell the crew] ‘We’re always wanting to portray the things that we are at risk of losing’, and portraying those things with great beauty. […] Filming in Oklahoma was a priority for me. We looked at other locations, but I said I’d love to go back to Oklahoma, where I filmed Minari, and get on the red dirt roads, get out on the pastures, in the fields, and shoot it on film. All of these things were very much part of the artistic decisions behind how to present this place.” (Chung, The AU Review)