Image courtesy of moviemania.io
Hello, everyone. As I hinted at in the previous review, where I covered The Prestige, there were two movies I added to the list at the last minute due to the fact that they were about to be removed from the streaming services they were on. Therefore, I decided to cover them first.
Now that I've reviewed the first one with The Prestige, here’s the other one.
This one is actually a creature feature, as is the subject of at least one review coming very soon. You can probably guess what one of them is if you go by the poster, which feels like a parody of it.* It also feels like it’s honoring 50s and 60s B-movies.
That should also tell you that this movie in a way is a horror comedy. It has a mostly lighthearted tone, with some dark moments here and there. However, although it is bloody at points, you don’t see most of the kills themselves, but just the aftermath.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s dig in, as I present my review of Tremors.
The story is set in the fictional small desert town of Perfection, Nevada. Two handymen, Val and Earl, grow tired of constantly getting jobs that provide minimal money and decide to head to Bixby, the closest town over. They ultimately have no choice but to head back when they discover that some mysterious creature has started picking off the residents. On top of that, their only way out of town is cut off, along with their phone lines.
With the help of a graduate student studying seismology, they realize that there’s more than one of these monsters, and that they hunt by movement. They can burst from the ground at any moment to attack their prey and drag them under.
While fighting to save their town from these monsters, which come to be dubbed “Graboids,” they have to outsmart them however they can.
What Worked: The acting is really good. For obvious reasons, I’ll start with the biggest name first,** and that is Mr. Six Degrees himself, Kevin Bacon, as Val.
With everything I’d seen him in prior to this, I did not expect him to be as funny as he was at times. He genuinely surprised me, especially considering this is one of the rare times where he doesn’t play a villain.
He also gets one of the best PG-13 F-bombs ever, but I’ll get more into that in a moment.
Then we have Fred Ward (The Right Stuff) as Earl. While he does give a very solid performance on his own, I particularly enjoyed his chemistry with Kevin Bacon. They really felt like friends to me.
Then there’s Finn Carter as Rhonda, in what would be her best known role within a career which, aside from five movies (including this one), mostly consisted of television work before she retired in 2005. It’s easy to see why this was ultimately the role that she became best known for.
The presence of her character (a seismologist) may seem like a plot convenience at first, but then over the course of the movie, she ends up being very crucial in fighting back against the Graboids.
There are three members of the supporting cast here that are most noteworthy.
The first two play the Gummers, a married couple who happen to be survivalists. The husband, Burt, is played by Michael Gross (who was known at the time for playing the Dad on Family Ties), and he is also the only actor to be in all seven movies*** plus the TV series.
His wife, Heather, is played by Reba McEntire in her film debut. In terms of singer-turned-actors, she’s actually pretty good in this. These two were the highlight of the movie because they get one of the best scenes. It involves them getting to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Seriously, they have so many guns that I was surprised this movie wasn’t set in Texas.
She also contributes the song “Why Not Tonight,” which plays over the credits. Though I’m not into country music myself, the song does fit the movie quite well. As for the rest of the music, I’ll delve more into that a little bit later.
The other one worth noting is someone I did not expect to see in this. That would be Ariana Richards; if that name sounds familiar, that’s because she would go on to play Lex in Jurassic Park.
The script is solid, balancing the comedy and horror enough to where one doesn’t overwhelm the other. It really shows in the tone, which, as mentioned in the intro, is mostly lighthearted, with some occasionally dark moments.
However, those moments still don’t detract from the tone, because they’re meant to show how much of a threat these creatures are.
With the overall consistency of the tone, it makes the pace consistent as well. It doesn’t slow down once the characters know what they’re up against, and it just gets more intense from there.
Where this movie really stands out is with the effects. They’re very practical, because they use the techniques that were common back then, namely animatronics, puppets, and miniatures. They feel that much more authentic as a result. What makes this more impressive is that they were done by ADI (Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.) when they were just starting out. The company would later go on to create more creature effects for films like Mars Attacks! and the two Alien vs. Predator movies.
The designs of the Graboids here look really good, even if one can easily be reminded of the Sandworms from Dune in regards to their appearance.
Thus, this is one of those times where a low-budget movie looks like it cost more than it did. A more recent example came out earlier this year… back when we still had the theaters. That one was within the same range as this. This one was budgeted at just 10 million, yet it feels like double, if not triple that.
What Didn’t Work: My only real issue with this is with the score. As a whole, it’s fine, but it feels like two different composers worked on it. Ironically, that kind of was the case here. There are some Western beats to it, which come from Ernest Troost, whose score for the most part ended up not being used. Aside from that, he did also provide the score for some of the darker moments early on.
Then there are some intense pieces of music to fit those moments in the rest of the movie, which come from Robert Folk, although he ended up being uncredited.
Throughout the movie, you can tell which is which. It doesn’t feel like one type of music naturally transitions into another like it would if it were the same composer for the whole movie.
It didn’t take me out of the movie, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless.
A similar case can be made for some of the language in this. It’s not as noticeable, but you can also tell that what were supposed to be F-bombs were dubbed over in post in order to bump this up from an R to a PG-13. This is a case of a movie being only allowed one, although this technically got away with two, since one is hard to make out.
The one that they did keep intact is the one I mentioned earlier, and it actually works because it’s one that’s meant to be funny, and of course it is.
Overall: Tremors is a fun tribute to B-movies from the old days, and at times it even feels like one. It has just the right balance of both frightening and funny, solid performances, an equally solid script, and a consistent tone and pace to match.
Yes, it does have an absurd premise, with worm-like creatures that pop out of the ground when you least expect it. However, that’s also what makes the movie as fun as it is, because it just takes that absurdity, and runs with it.
It’s just as fun if you watch it as a monster movie on its own, and it can also work if you watch it as a horror comedy.
Regardless of which mindset you have in deciding to watch it, it’s still very entertaining.
In fact, the excellent visual effects alone, which hold up very well today, are worth the price of admission.
*I’m not the only one who picked up on that. Also, that movie was one of the Fourth of July-themed movies I had planned to cover.
**He’s in a couple other movies I plan to review very soon as well. One of them I definitely cannot wait to do, and I’m just going to leave it at that.
***This one is the only one to receive a theatrical release, as the subsequent installments have all been direct-to-video.