Critics reviews

In trying to appeal to a broad audience, “Twisters” takes on a tough challenge. It mostly pulls it off... [The film is] loaded with fun and sometimes funny set pieces and enough danger to keep you on your toes.

Lore is currency in this age of continuity, but Twister’s legacy weighs this sequel down. Chung overthinks Twisters, delivering breathless action and a charismatic cast in an unsatisfying way as he tries to spin a legacy sequel out of thin air.

[Twisters] feels perfectly serviceable in the era of lore-addicted trash such as Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire... [The film] feels no need to offer footnotes and variation on its predecessor. It’s a big fat summer movie in its own right. And that’s something these days.

You wouldn’t think spectacle would be in his wheelhouse, but Chung knows how to build tension and pace exponentially developing danger... Not surprisingly, Twisters knows that it has a not-so-secret weapon at its disposal, a Category 5 charm offensive in human form. Daisy Edgar-Jones has been tasked with the emotional and dramatic heavy lifting... It’s Glen Powell, however, that whips everything into a frenzy.

[Twisters] makes the best argument this year for the enduring power of collective big-screen entertainment... This follow-up, directed by Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung, vastly improves on [the 1996 original] in all regards.

[Twisters] is an attempt to make a big, dumb entertainment that keeps getting in its own way, unable to stop itself from being serious about things that in no way need to be taken seriously. It’s not a throwback, but it doesn’t feel like an imaginative update on the original, either.

In Twister – still only a fairly middling film about a science experiment – the chemistry between Hunt and Paxton, along with the history between their characters, gave the film a solid anchor. That emotional core is missing in Twisters, even with a few stabs at highlighting the human cost of America’s inadequate tornado warning and damage mitigation systems.

With its peppy cast, streamlined story and about a bazillion pixels’ worth of VFX cyclones to sweep you back in your seat, it’s a fun and refreshingly old-school night at the pictures.

Twisters barely kicks up dust... [It] proceeds as a jumble of poorly sketched backstories and subplots, half-hearted topical references... and tepid fan service... Even the finale... feels strangely undercooked.

Twisters is a fun film with some big setpiece scenes, and Ramos and Powell make gallant admirers for Kate. I do think though that the movies still haven’t given Edgar-Jones – so excellent in TV’s Normal People – the well-written big-screen role she deserves. Some spectacular stormy weather, though.

The problem [with Twisters] is that there is no urgent narrative reason for the characters to put themselves in harm's way, so there is no reason for the audience to cheer them on. The adrenaline-pumping music and the shouted dialogue is meant to fool us into thinking that we're watching noble heroes going into battle against evil alien invaders.

As a summer blockbuster, Twisters more or less meets the requirements... But something’s missing. Mark L. Smith’s screenplay... settles into a routine pattern in which one whirlwind follows another with too little incremental buildup, [while] the character dynamics are entirely predictable, which tends to soften the drama.