Review: I saw Twisters in 4DX and I may never be the same. 

4DX is “motion seats and special effects including wind, fog, mist/rain, scents and more that perfectly sync to the on-screen action.” I’d seen many films in the process before the pandemic and it was…goofy fun. The seats shook and occasional air bullets would whiz by your head or some nastyish water would spray on you. Post pandemic, the 4DX theater at Regal Times Square updated its technology in a way I can only explain as….more violent. Instead of shaking you a bit, you get rudely buffeted about. Four-seat banks are independently mounted so you can track up and down, which leads to many more possibilities for effects.

The first film I saw in this enhanced experience was DUNE 2. There was a reception before the screening and I had a glass of wine and….whoa. It was incredible. Sort of dream-like and loud at the same time. 

Next I saw FURIOSA and wow, that was a wonderful movie. It didn’t really need 4DX but that part was fun. (Just writing this makes me wish I’d seen it in a theater again.)

When I got the invite to TWISTERS I knew it was going to go HAM and I was not wrong. 

But first, the movie: it stars Glen Powell as Tyler Owens, a YouTube storm chaser in a cowboy hat and tight clothes. He is not the main character, though; that’s Kate Cooper, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, a woman who instinctively knows air patterns, a skill that will be put to the test.  

As the film opens, Kate is a young meteorological whiz who scours the Oklahoma plains with a bunch of YA wahoos trying to prove that a compound made of adult diapers can absorb the moisture in a tornado to calm it down, saving lives and properties. As in a horror film, these carefree youngsters are far too carefree to survive the opening scene, and a tornado gone wrong ends with several of Kate’s best friends blown away…her pal Javi (Anthony Ramos) is the other survivor. 

Flash forward five years…Kate is a gloomy adult who works at a weather service. Re-enter Javi, who has a new crew with an incredible new technology called…3D! They plan to track a twister from three different directions and use the data to…learn about twisters. 

At first Kate doesn’t want to join Javi’s new venture due to her post tornado stress disorder. But we wouldn’t have a movie if she didn’t, so soon we’re back to Oklahoma, where our serious scientist gang rapidly becomes annoyed with Tyler and his crew’s country music blasting, rocket firing antics. 

There isn’t much story after that….we learn that Javi may have some ethically challenged backing, and it turns out the YouTube yahoos are actually not all loud assholes. We see the devastation wrought by the tornados on the community and eventually helping save people becomes the priority for Kate, Javi and Tyler.  

TWISTERS was directed by Lee Isaac Chung who previously made the beautiful, Oscar winning MINARI. Chung grew up in rural Arkansas and brings the same sympathy for farmlands and living close to the dirt to TWISTERS. He also transfers MINARI’S sense of foreboding dread. In MINARI you just know something awful is going to happen to this struggling family (will it be grandma who does it?) and in TWISTERS the anticipation of awful things happening is built right into the concept. 

But I can’t tell you too much about the filmmaking in TWISTERS because whenever there was an action scene….all hell broke loose. The seats in the theaters suddenly started bucking like broncos, rattling up and down so much that I thought my arms were going to get bruised. The experience of the film was like going to an amusement park: in the action scene that opens the film you became dragged right into the struggle to survive while you are holding on to your theater seat for dear life. Then there would be some quiet moments while Powell and Jones would get a little closer….and then ALL HELL WOULD BREAK LOOSE AGAIN. Whenever a truck or car would bash into something….your SEAT would jerk violently. It was very effective and I think I cried out a few times. 

There are three long (I think?!?!? I lost track of time) set pieces in TWISTERS that felt like being in a car crash in 4DX. The movie was all loud whooshing and the seats were relentlessly slamming you around. When you get shaken up that much, your body thinks you are actually in an accident, and about half an hour into the movie my adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine levels must have been off the charts. With each session, the audience got more into it, cheering and laughing and whooping like they were on a roller coaster, then breathlessly waiting for the next disaster. We were all surviving the car crash! I went with the friend who introduced me to the 4DX experience, Dan Fogler, and he looked like he was having the time of his life.  

I know there have been other “Sensurround” processes in theaters, but this has to be the most sophisticated and daring of them all. I honestly feel that it elevated the movie going experience to something fresh and special. By the end of the film people were yelling and clapping and hollering – becoming physically involved in the storyline made them so immersed in the world of the film it was hard to separate the movie from reality. And in a brilliant move, the final action scene finds the survivors in….a movie theater. Talk about a self-insert.  

The cast is full of actors who make an impression in thinly sketched roles like Katy O’Brien, Brandon Perea, and Tunde Adebimpe. Javi’s team also includes a stuck up asshole type. “Man he looks like a young Henry Cavill,” I thought, not knowing it was David Corenswet until the credits rolled. I feel Superman will be in good tights. Ramos has a thankless task as “the old friend with a flame for the heroine” but them’s the breaks. 

Glen Powell is the It man of the day and he’s movie star solid here – in the trailer, the seats vibrated whenever he spoke, in case you needed a hint. Although today’s straight-laced audiences frown on showing skin, a scene where Tyler is caught in a downpour while wearing a tight white t-shirt actually drew cheers from the audience. Edgar-Jones didn’t make much of an impression on me. She tousles up great, and can look alarmed, but a few dramatic moments fell a bit flat. That said, I know she made a racy impression in Normal People, and I think she might have been cast based on her ability to show in a simmering way that she found Glen Powell attractive. In that, she succeeds and so does the film. 

I don’t know if TWISTERS was a good film or not, but it was a hell of a ride for two hours. A regular adult ticket for a Regal Times Sq. 4DX showing of TWISTERS will set you back about $30, so not cheap, but only a few dollars more than a regular showing here in NYC. If it takes battering and rattling audiences around like they jumped on the Cyclone at Coney Island to lure them back into theaters…..I say go for it.