My Review of "Twister"

Twister is a disaster movie from 1996. It was very popular at the time and I remember not liking this when it first came out. Recently, I reviewed the new revamped Twisters, and I didn't like it. A ton of people said the first movie was way better. That got me thinking, was the first movie better than I remembered it? I hate listening to people on the internet because I wasted 2 hours of my life with this one.

The movie starts off with, you guessed it a tornado. You have a small family escaping a tornado. The family escapes to their underground shelter. It's pretty intense because they make you wonder who's going to die from this tornado. At first, I thought it was going to be their pet dog because he just wouldn't follow them but then it was quite obvious. The father trying to hold the door down to protect his family gets swept up into the funnel.

We soon realize that this was a very young Jo. Years later, she becomes a tornado researcher. She chases down tornadoes with a team of wild and crazy tornado enthusiasts.

This wouldn't be the same movie without Bill though. Bill comes into the picture as he's trying to get his divorce papers signed by Jo. He brings along his new fiancé, Melissa. You see, Bill used to be one of the crazy tornado chasers alongside Jo but now he's a meteorologist. You'd think he'd know better than to bring his new fiancé to a tornado zone when he's a tornado whisperer. He's only an expert on storms when it's convenient by the way.

It so happens that Bill and Jo created a concept for weather receivers. The plan was to build this contraption and have a tornado suck them up. This way they can read valuable data about tornadoes. Apparently, it's never been done before. While Bill was galivanting, Jo had gotten the whole thing working.

Meanwhile, they have some sort of adversary named Jonas that wants to do the same thing. Both of them are trying to create early warning detection to save millions of lives but each of them want to do it first. They're both willing to fight each other to be the first ones to do it too. A very strange concept to me.

You'd think that this movie would be more about the destructive nature of tornadoes but it's a 90s movie so that's not going to be the case. This movie focuses a lot about the love triangle between Jo, Bill and Melissa. Oddly enough, this is probably the most cordial love triangle I've ever seen. No one really fights with one another except for maybe Jo and Bill and you know those two are going to end up with one another. Melissa isn't even angry about being brought to a place where they constantly endanger her life.

I also have an issue with some of the dialogue and acting in this movie as well. Some of it feels very corny and really awkward. It may be the trend back in the day but it does not translate well after all of these years. Some of it is so bad it's borderline comedy.

There is a bright side to this movie. Despite the age of this movie, the special effects are quite decent. Yes, some of the CGI is quite dated but you have to consider that this movie came out three decades ago. It's quite a feat and pretty impressive. The audio is quite good too. They have a ton of wind ambiance to make you feel like you're there. Even the special effects are thrown in there all over the room if you have a nice home theatre to play this off of.

Overall, I have not changed my opinion about this movie after all of these years. I wished I had trusted my gut when I tried to think back at this movie. It is definitely not something I want to revisit again. This was not a good time. In fact, I felt like shutting this off a few times. The last portion of the movie is probably the best payoff. I have to give this movie a 5 out of 10.