A moderately suspenseful tale of a midwestern family coping with an outbreak of tornadoes, NIGHT OF THE TWISTERS offers low-budget thrills, a competent no-name cast, and a simple morality piece about father-son relations.
Rogue weather patterns cause an unprecedented array of twisters to converge on Blainsworth, Nebraska, and the Hatch family finds its various members scattered across town. When the storm hits, teenaged Dan (Devon Sawa) and his friend Arthur (Amos Crawley) get baby Ryan and head for the basement.
The boys climb out after the tornadoes subside, only to find the house destroyed. Soon joined by Arthur's sisters, Stacey and Ronnie Vae (Laura Bertram and Megan Kitchen), the kids find the town's banker dead on the road and decide to use his car to seek out Dan's parents. Dan and Stacey
eventually leave the others at a roadblock; taking the car, they locate and rescue Grandma Belle (Helen Hughes) from the wreck of an animal shed and help free their stepfather, Jack (John Schneider), from an overturned truck.
Jack and Dan, heretofore struggling through a difficult relationship, now work together to find Dan's mom, Laura (Lori Hallier). When they finally reach the community shelter, they learn that Laura and Jenny (Jhene Erwin) have gone with meteorologist Bob Iverson (David Ferry) to the Hatch home.
Everyone is soon reunited at the remains of the house. On the way back to the shelter, another twister hits and literally chases them up the highway and through the ruins of the town. The family finds shelter in an underpass and stay there until the twister passes. In the morning, they all resolve
to stay and rebuild the town.
NIGHT OF THE TWISTERS combines made-for-TV disaster thrills with a Middle American coming-of-age family drama as son-and-stepfather tensions get resolved in the heat of crisis. While there is nothing here to match the flying cows and spinning gas trucks of 1996's TWISTER--NIGHT's biggest effect is
a refrigerator being sucked clear across a kitchen floor and out the door--imaginative direction and clever production design vividly recreate the effects of a vicious storm on a midwestern community. The scenes of the ruined town at night are particularly evocative as the protagonists frantically
search for each other.
The only names in the cast being erstwhile teen idol Devon Sawa (LITTLE GIANTS, NOW AND THEN) and former Duke of Hazzard John Schneider, the film works at creating a portrait of ordinary people, rather than Hollywood stars, caught in a crisis situation.
leave a comment
