I didn’t hear much about the movie “Twisters” (2024) before it came out, but what I did hear was confusing at best. I had seen a couple articles saying that it wasn’t very good, or that it was just okay. However, two of my friends recommended it to me, saying that it was very good and that I should watch it. Despite the negative things I had seen online, I decided to give it a chance, and wow, it was actually really good. A very high-tension, action-packed film that also had a small love plot to it. Not what I was expecting, but it was a welcome surprise.

The premise is very interesting. A retired storm chaser comes out of retirement to chase tornadoes again in Oklahoma and gets caught up in one of the biggest storm seasons ever. A ‘once-in-a generation’ season, they call it. This storm chaser and meteorologist, Kate Carter (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones), had a bad experience studying tornadoes in her youth, as she lost two friends and her boyfriend at the time to a storm that escalated way faster than expected. Because of this, she doesn’t chase tornadoes anymore, and now works as a meteorologist in New York City. But when one of her old colleagues comes and tells her about this storm season they’re having in Oklahoma and the research that’s paired with it, she comes out of retirement. 

Along the way, she meets Tyler Owens (played by Glen Powell) who is a storm chaser who makes money as a YouTuber, sending out videos of him tracking and encountering tornadoes. This is where the love triangle begins, with Kate having to decide between her old colleague and this new, much better looking Tyler Owens. Although the love triangle is written really weirdly, Kate’s old colleague shows interest at first but begins to focus more on research as time goes on (he’s also using real-estate profiteering to generate income for the research project, which is a weird detail that the writers threw in), and he barely seems like he cares by the end of the film. Either that, or he’s just given up, which makes for a fairly non-existent love triangle. And Tyler Owens is just kind of a bad person at first, or he seems that way. Very odd love story, but I do enjoy how they focus more on the plot of Kate wanting to use the research to be able to save people in the future rather than the love story, which got sidelined at times. Very refreshing to see, mainly since I’m not a huge fan of romance movies.

As the movie goes on though, there are some weird choices that the writers make. The biggest example to me is that it doesn’t seem like Kate really learns anything as time goes on. She is able to detect weather changes up to hours in advance due to her intimate knowledge of how weather patterns and clouds work, but by the time she realizes something is going to happen at a key moment, she messes up or takes too long and it ends up being too late. There’s one scene in particular where they are at a crowded rodeo and both her and Tyler Owens sense a change in the air and they know that there’s a tornado nearby, but they don’t do anything until the sirens start going off. They could have gotten people out of there much earlier, but they don’t for some reason. Which was a really weird writing choice, since her whole goal is to be able to save people with her knowledge and the research that they are doing. Instead, she is flung into another scene of trauma and tragedy (there are multiple in the film). I think it would have been cooler for her character progression if she was able to recognize those signs and get people away rather than just sit back and watch as all hell breaks loose. 

All in all though, it’s actually a pretty good film, despite a couple odd writing choices. It has a very likable cast of characters, an overall good plot, and some very well done action scenes. Tornadoes are also really cool, so that helped my positive opinion on this movie. If you aren’t a fan of gore or watching people get pulled screaming into tornadoes, then maybe this movie isn’t for you, but for most others, I would recommend this film. I would give it a four-and-a-half out of five stars, it’s definitely not perfect, but it’s still a very good watch. “Twisters” can be found on Peacock.