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Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung’s reboot of the TV-rerun classic Twister (1996), answers the existential question implicitly haunting every resurrection of a decades-old cinematic property — was this necessary? — with the sort of competence that’s mostly faithful to the spirit of its forebear but also devoid of much flair of its own. Charmingly imbued with monster- and disaster-movie tropes, Twister itself wasn’t that good; it eventually wore out its welcome. But it had an infectiously brazen confidence in itself that worked well in tandem with the life-risking boldness of its storm-chaser cast of characters, bolstered by the quasi-Spielbergian style of cinematographer turned director Jan de Bont. Twisters technically has a lot of that, but whatever pleasures it achieves feel performed rather than organic — efficient mimicry whose sense of fun is dimmed by the feeling that we’ve seen much of what it tries before, and better.

The narrative doesn’t have any relation to the original movie except for that it, too, follows two separate groups of storm chasers in Oklahoma. Some are in it for the right reasons (science), and others are not (they want the fame going in the direct path of a tornado can bring you). Twisters is anchored by Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a meteorologist living in New York City working at the National Weather Service. Her specialty is tornadoes, something she studied in school passionately and, as the film’s prologue shows, tragically. A research mission with some friends about five years ago led three people in her gung-ho quintet to be fatally sucked into the skies. She’s left field work behind for good, or so she thinks. She’s persuaded to go back to Oklahoma when one of that group’s survivors, Javi (Anthony Ramos), practically pleads with her to return to the state for boots-on-the-ground research for his new startup amid an unusually busy storm season. 

Read the full review at 425.