Twisters In 4DX Is A Religious Experience

Twisters, the sequel to the 1996 storm-chasing action film Twister, is out now in select theaters, with a full-blown release coming July 19. Some of those select theaters include Regal’s 4DX showings, which are highly immersive experiences where the seats move, shake, and tilt, water sprays in your face, smoke pours out of the ceiling and floor, and pressurized air whizzes past your ear. Last night, I saw Twisters in one of those theaters in Times Square, walking out after its two-hour runtime slightly damp, a little shaken, and absolutely certain that there has never been a movie more perfectly suited for 4DX.

Twisters stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as a former storm-chasing student reluctantly returning to the field and Glen Powell as a rowdy chaser with a cowboy sensibility and a popular YouTube channel. Like the original film, the push-and-pull between corporate shills and blue-collar babes drives the plot, while a simmering romance between the two leads hooks you in. But unlike the original Twister, you can watch this new film while getting your shit absolutely rocked by wind, rain, and hydraulics. You know that internet meme whereby someone posts a picture of something so thoroughly modern (like a frozen Baja Blast or a robot police dog) along with the phrase: “This would kill a Victorian child”? Twisters in 4DX would turn a Victorian child to dust.

I’m not kidding—the 4DX experience is rowdy. Anytime an action sequence began, the woman next to me would hold onto her chair for dear life, anticipating how much she’d be rocked around as soon as a truck turned onto a bumpy dirt road or a huge piece of debris whizzed past. Two kids in front of me (who were definitely too young to be there) were shaken around so violently I worried for their soft little brains. Every so often, flashes of light timed perfectly with the on-screen lightning strikes that hit just before a funnel cloud descends sent murmurs of anticipation through the crowd as we all waited for our seats to start bucking like broncos again.

During a tornado scene, the theater would be periodically sliced through with the sound of gleeful laughter, like the kind you’d hear on a rollercoaster’s ascent. At one point, a tornado petered out around the storm chasers, and a perfectly timed plume of smoke wafted up from under the screen, signifying the disintegrating funnel cloud. Several people let out awe-inspired “oohs.” But it was during the final scene, which mirrors the ending of Twister (read: the characters encounter their biggest tornado yet) and takes place in a movie theater, that I achieved Nirvana.

As the massive tornado barrels toward a small town, our heroes usher many of its denizens into an old movie theater, quickly realizing that there’s no basement in this building and they’ll have to ride the storm out in the theater itself. My chair rumbles and shakes as the twister nears the building, puffs of wind dry out my eyes, spurts of water leave droplets on my glasses. Anthony Ramos’ character, Javi, yells, “this theater wasn’t built to withstand what’s coming!” and I let out an uncharacteristically cowboy-esque “YEEHAW!” Then the wall on which the theater’s screen is mounted tears away, revealing the funnel in the near-distance.

For a moment, as the ground rumbles beneath me and I’m forced to squint my eyes against the elements, it feels like the wall of this Times Square theater has been ripped away too, and I’m staring into the belly of the beast. “Holy shit!” I yell, as my body is whipped about. “Holy shit!” This is it. This is what I’ve wanted to see in person my entire life. “The finger of God,” as they say in the original film. It’s roaring, it’s twisting, it’s gaining on us—I’m going to get sucked into it in a moment and become just another statistic. And then, the tornado dissipates. My seat settles into stillness. The wind calms. The entire theater exhales. We just survived the storm that is Twisters in 4DX.