Twisters (2024)

Twisters is the old tornado movie with fresh names penciled into the same blanks, and it gets away with it. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate Carter, a storm chaser who quit Oklahoma after a storm took her friends and now works a NOAA desk in New York. Old pal Javi lures her back for a week to test a 3D scanning setup, and she runs straight into Tyler Owens, the YouTube Tornado Wrangler, whose crew sells merch and hands the money to the towns the storms hit. Glen Powell plays him like a rodeo poster come to life, and the slow thaw between those two is better written than it needs to be. Lee Isaac Chung makes the storms feel enormous, especially the night in Stillwater that sends everyone diving into an empty motel pool. The science is pure movie, and real experts said so. It made $372 million worldwide on a reported $155M. A 7.0 because it’s a blockbuster that knows what it is. $897 says you rate the next thunderstorm on the EF scale from your front porch.

What works: Edgar-Jones and Powell have easy chemistry, and the storms look and sound huge, especially in Stillwater and El Reno.

What doesn’t: The plot is the original’s skeleton with new names, and the plan to tame a giant tornado with a truckload of chemicals is pure movie science.

Who it’s for: Anyone who watched the original on a rainy afternoon and wants the same feeling with bigger speakers.