April Film Club: Twisters
Disaster movies have long been about pushing cinematic boundaries, delivering large-scale devastation alongside human drama. The height of cinema throughout the '90s and 00s, the disaster movie made a welcome comeback in 2024 with something that felt familiar yet fresh at the same time. Enter Twisters, a high-stakes, high-intensity return to nature’s most terrifying force: the storm.
From the moment the first trailer dropped, Twisters made its intentions clear - this isn’t just another nostalgia-fuelled rehash, nor is it a low-effort disaster flick with paper-thin characters. It’s a modern take on what made audiences fall in love with the genre in the first place: an unrelenting, visceral thrill ride that reminds us just how small we are in the face of nature’s fury.
The story follows a group of storm chasers, adrenaline junkies, and scientists who throw themselves into the heart of the Midwest’s deadliest tornado outbreak. At the centre of it all is Daisy Edgar-Jones, playing a meteorologist and former storm chaser. She leads a cast that also includes Glen Powell, who seems to be making it his personal mission to bring back the kind of ‘movie star’ energy of previous decades. Alongside this central pair is Anthony Ramos, who plays a well-funded corporate storm chaser. David Corenswet plays Ramos' business partner, bringing a stone-faced stoicism to the role, jumping off the screen and delivering a certain understated charisma to this tornado tracking tech whiz. (Catch Corenswet this July playing the titular man of steel in James Gunn’s Superman.) While the film promises jaw-dropping visuals, it also leans into the human element - these are people who run toward the storm when every instinct tells them to run away.
And, of course, the real star of the show? The tornadoes. This is not a film where CGI is just background noise. The storms in Twisters are alive - towering, roaring monsters tearing through towns, swallowing highways, and tossing trucks like toys. The destruction here feels tangible, real. The sound design alone - howling winds, snapping metal, the eerie silence before impact - will likely make your stomach tighten in anticipation.
Director Lee Isaac Chung, best known for intimate indie dramas, brings an emotional depth to these characters, ensuring that when the storm hits, we care who makes it out.
Disaster movies work best when they balance human drama with sheer spectacle. Twisters does just that, delivering blockbuster-level destruction while keeping us invested in the people caught in the chaos.
The storm is coming. And this time, it’s bigger than ever. Watch Twisters here.
From the moment the first trailer dropped, Twisters made its intentions clear - this isn’t just another nostalgia-fuelled rehash, nor is it a low-effort disaster flick with paper-thin characters. It’s a modern take on what made audiences fall in love with the genre in the first place: an unrelenting, visceral thrill ride that reminds us just how small we are in the face of nature’s fury.
The story follows a group of storm chasers, adrenaline junkies, and scientists who throw themselves into the heart of the Midwest’s deadliest tornado outbreak. At the centre of it all is Daisy Edgar-Jones, playing a meteorologist and former storm chaser. She leads a cast that also includes Glen Powell, who seems to be making it his personal mission to bring back the kind of ‘movie star’ energy of previous decades. Alongside this central pair is Anthony Ramos, who plays a well-funded corporate storm chaser. David Corenswet plays Ramos' business partner, bringing a stone-faced stoicism to the role, jumping off the screen and delivering a certain understated charisma to this tornado tracking tech whiz. (Catch Corenswet this July playing the titular man of steel in James Gunn’s Superman.) While the film promises jaw-dropping visuals, it also leans into the human element - these are people who run toward the storm when every instinct tells them to run away.
And, of course, the real star of the show? The tornadoes. This is not a film where CGI is just background noise. The storms in Twisters are alive - towering, roaring monsters tearing through towns, swallowing highways, and tossing trucks like toys. The destruction here feels tangible, real. The sound design alone - howling winds, snapping metal, the eerie silence before impact - will likely make your stomach tighten in anticipation.
Director Lee Isaac Chung, best known for intimate indie dramas, brings an emotional depth to these characters, ensuring that when the storm hits, we care who makes it out.
Disaster movies work best when they balance human drama with sheer spectacle. Twisters does just that, delivering blockbuster-level destruction while keeping us invested in the people caught in the chaos.
The storm is coming. And this time, it’s bigger than ever. Watch Twisters here.