People are desperate to see things move on-screen in this cinematically torpid summer of 2024. Luckily, tornadoes move with a wild, swirling rush, sucking up people and cars and chunks of buildings and everything else as they go, propelling it all into violent motion too. So Twisters is a big hit.

It does everything you’d expect of the sequel to 1996’s Twister. Even more tornadoes have been added to the narrative this go-around, churning relentlessly down “Tornado Alley” in Oklahoma, pursued by fanatical storm chasers. Director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) is perfectly competent in framing this kind of action, which is all he needs to be in order to succeed.

Without ever mentioning the words “climate change,” the by-the-numbers script written by Mark L. Smith (The Boys in the Boat, The Revenant) from a story by Joseph Kosinski (director of Top Gun: Maverick) makes clear that ever more “extreme weather” is causing this phenomenon. So extreme is this weather that the last tornado portrayed in the film is an evil tornado, dark and smoldering satanically as it builds in malevolent strength, intent on massive human casualties.