‘Twisters’ in 4DX: Holy Sh*t!

Immersive cinema technologies date back to at least the 1950s—shortly after the birth of 3D—with rudimentary, VR-esque personal pods like the Sensorama. "4D," which seeks to imbue moviegoing with motion, might sound new, but it actually goes back at least 50 years, to the disaster movie Earthquake starring Ava Gardener and Charlton Heston, which employed a technology called Sensurround for select screenings, meant to shake cinema seats using rumbling bass. However, the incarnation with which most viewers are familiar tends to be a fixture of theme parks, dating back to the 1984 special-attraction film The Sensorium at Six Flags in Baltimore, which first placed viewers in seats that physically rattled. Now, the shtick seems poised for a mainstream comeback—and how.

Multiplexes have slowly re-introduced these special attractions over the last 15 years (under various names like D-Box and Paramount's MX4D), and "4DX" just happens to be the latest brand name applied to the gimmick. However, the technology feels tailor-made for Twisters, just as Twisters feels perfectly designed as a 4DX showcase, primarily found in Regal theaters in the United States. If you've been on the fence about watching a movie this way, there could not be a more fitting introduction. Not only do the films and the tech make for a comfy handshake during whizbang moments, but the specific story Chung tells ends up enhanced as well, thanks to surprising moments of subtlety, whose impact verges on emotional when translated into movement.

Walking into a 4DX screen for the first time can feel uncanny. The seats are a little wider and heftier than a regular theater, and a little higher too. If you've watched a movie on a luxury recliner in a recently refurbished multiplex, you might be used to buttons on your armrest, usually ones that allow you to recline or sit up straight, though in this case the options on the button labels are "Water On" and "Water Off." It's ominous, but at least you have the option of not getting wet if you don't want to. This is the only thing you can actually control.

Equally ominous are the little holes on the seat in front of you (from where water spritzes out on occasion) and the enormous fans overhead and on all sides—a must for a movie about tornadoes. Oddly enough, the seats also have cup holders, which feels like a cruel joke, or better yet, a challenge to see if you can take a swig of soda without spilling it on your person. If all this seems intimidating, that's part of the experience, like waiting in line for a rollercoaster.

Your first tryst with the actual seat-shaking arrives during a short preview for the tech, a 4DX company pre-roll in which you're yanked through a snowy, mountainous environment at great speed. It is, admittedly, a little unpleasant, and not a great example of what the tech can (and will) do during the actual movie, because it's essentially a montage meant to throw every aspect of the experience at you faster than your brain can process it. What's on screen doesn't even feel connected to the actual seat movements and weather effects because of this—but if you've made it as far as this subpar tech demo, chances are you're not planning to turn around.

Good.

Set years after the first film (and without much connection to it beyond the basic premise), Twisters’ prologue is the real demo, an opening scene that slowly ramps up the tension as a group of scientists, led by optimistic college student Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones), drives towards a storm for which they're unprepared. While the pre-movie 4DX montage, and any theme park "4D" films you might've seen, tend to make exclusive use of first person point-of-view, realizing your seat movements are tied to a more traditionally shot and edited movie like Twisters is a neat little revelation unto itself. The chairs bob and tilt alongside camera movements, and begin to rumble when the scene cuts to the inside of a car. The wind effects are muted at first, accompanying a gentle breeze, but they slowly pick up steam as the characters charge headfirst towards danger. You don't just feel the massive weather event, but your proximity to it as it gets closer, as it builds to a disorienting crescendo, sloshing you around like ice in a drink shaker. And then—

Stillness. A cut from chaos to silence in the movie is matched by a sudden lack of movement, and the contrast is immense. You can feel the phantom vibrations even once the motion stops, as though the fear of the storm were still plaguing Kate as she walks through the decimated ruins of an Oklahoma landscape the following day.

The story is set five years later, and as a now-cynical Kate rides the New York subway—her life as a storm chaser well in her rearview—the rumbles of the train car are indecipherable from the preceding reverberations. The storm is long gone, but you can still feel it, like a physical manifestation of the character's PTSD.

When she's eventually coaxed, by her old friend Javier (Anthony Ramos), to return to the field and map tornadoes to learn how to better predict them, the film slowly but surely begins ramping up once again. A drizzle of rain here. A brief gust of wind there. The bumps of a truck on an uneven road, and so forth. Before these effects get stale or predictable, Kate and Javier come up against a group of hedonistic "storm wranglers" led by cocky cowboy meteorologist Tyler Owen (Glen Powell), who runs a makeshift YouTube outfit that live streams their thrill seeking. The film then cuts between numerous different angles, from the over drone shots they employ—during which the seats tilt forward and give you the sensation of free-fall—to the in-vehicle shakes and swerves, which you feel up close. From then on, it's off to the races.

The more chaotic things get, the more the 4DX experience begins pulling out its big guns, from in-theater fog and lightning effects, to a small tube that whacks the back of your ankles to recreate the feeling of kicking up mud and dirt. There's also a sparingly-used nozzle that you might not notice near your head that blows sudden bursts of air into your ear, like an over-eager teenager trying to be romantic. It's weird, but kind of fun.

You do kind of get used to being wobbled as the Twisters goes on, which is hardly a bad thing when the movements so closely match the on-screen aesthetic decisions, but the film and the 4DX keeps their secret weapon neatly sheathed until the final act. The original Twister featured a fun scene at a drive-in movie theater, during which a tornado burst through the screen, and Chung's follow-up pays homage to this moment in dazzling, self-reflexive fashion. At just the right moment, as people take refuge from an approaching tornado inside a one-screen arthouse, a character practically turns to the camera and says, "This theater isn't built to withstand what's coming," and he's right.

What follows is sheer pandemonium, both on-screen and in your seat, as the movie saves its wildest, most out-of-control series of motions for the very end, in a way that matches what's on screen in dizzying, hilarious fashion. If you've wondered what that scene in Bean: The Movie would feel like, when Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean turns up a 4D experience called "The Ride of Doom" to such dangerous levels that it tosses people around the room, this is as close as you can get without a concussion or a broken limb.

Twisters in 4DX is perfectly safe, but that it feels like you might get swept into the air at any moment is a perfect meld of content and form. It's gloriously silly, but sure to leave you breathless from laughter and sheer euphoria—the result of a dazzling summer movie directed with aplomb, and a gimmick shaped to match it.