Twisters

Kate Carter can read storms. Wind direction, cloud movement, temperature—to her, these form a pattern long before others see anything more than bad weather. But tornadoes don’t adhere to the certainty of calculations. Twisters begins with a fascination for extreme forces of nature and quickly makes clear just how thin the line between scientific curiosity and overconfidence can be.

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate, a meteorologist with an unusual knack for tornadoes. After an experience that fundamentally changes her relationship with storm chasing, she withdraws from direct contact with the storms. It’s only her former colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) who convinces her to return to Oklahoma. His team tracks tornadoes using modern measurement technology and aims to collect the most precise data possible about their inner workings. Then Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) shows up.

Tyler calls himself a “Tornado Wrangler” and drives his crew right into the heart of the storm. He turns storm chasing into a spectacle: cameras are rolling, fans follow his missions, and T-shirts are just as much a part of the act as his heavy-duty vehicle. Powell plays him with exactly the right amount of self-confidence to make Kate initially view him as an irresponsible show-off. Tyler doesn’t just walk into a scene—he drives right into it.

Thus, Twisters presents two very different ways of looking at the same tornadoes. Kate seeks patterns and predictability. Javi’s team collects data. Tyler turns the encounter into an event. Director Lee Isaac Chung maintains these approaches side by side for a long time and avoids immediately declaring one side the sensible one and the other the foolish one. Behind the spectacle, there may be real experience. Behind science, there may be interests that have little to do with knowledge alone.

The tornadoes themselves don’t fit into any of these categories. This is important because Twisters cannot treat its forces of nature like classic cinematic villains. A tornado doesn’t pursue anyone out of personal hatred, cannot be intimidated, and has no plan that the characters could figure out. It forms, moves, and destroys. People can observe it and calculate probabilities. Control remains something else entirely.

Chung turns this unpredictability into the driving force behind the major storm sequences. Often, the threat does not begin with a spectacular image, but with changes in the surroundings. The wind picks up. Objects shift. The sky loses its predictability. The characters observe, calculate, and decide. As soon as the tornado is actually there, scientific detachment gives way to physical proximity.

Cars, houses, barns, and roads provide the scale for the storm sequences. Familiar things suddenly lose their reliability: what just moments ago offered protection can become a danger itself seconds later. In this way, Chung keeps the tornadoes close to his characters’ everyday lives. The landscape is not an empty space for destruction, but constantly determines where someone can even take shelter.

Kate observes this environment differently than Tyler. She looks for changes in the sky early on and knows exactly what might result from them; his demonstrative nonchalance initially makes him seem like someone who needs the risk primarily for the next big show. Edgar-Jones and Powell don’t have to constantly play up this contrast. Their interplay becomes more interesting anyway as soon as first impressions are no longer enough and both have to look more closely.

As soon as the sky darkens again, these layers converge anyway. For Kate, every new storm means knowledge, risk, responsibility, and the temptation to get just one step closer. After all, storm chasing thrives on a contradiction: you have to get close to a danger to understand it better, even though that very understanding tells you to keep your distance.

Of course, twister chasers love the spectacle. Trucks race down country roads, the sky turns black, and somewhere, equipment is being set up in a hurry. But while the storm chasers drive toward the next tornado, other people are trying to escape it. For some, the adventure begins. For others, the roof is about to fly off.