Tremors review.
Tremors is the definition of a cult classic. It’s campy, it’s fun and it is littered with characters to love. This creature feature (featuring great creatures) became an immediate go to on cable and at the video store after its 1990 release. It even launched an unexpected franchise. How did this B movie that was ignored at the box office pull it all off? It just had too many charms to not win people over.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Tremors
Directed by Ron Underwood
Screenplay by Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson
Starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire
Tremors Review
The best creature features have a good idea and play it for all that it’s worth. These aren’t movies that demand complex back stories or heavy-handed messaging. There is a monster (or monsters) …attack it, run from it, try to survive it. If you’re lucky, it’ll have a few entertaining characters and some solid monster effects. If you’re very lucky, it’ll provide you with some fun. Tremors will make you feel very, very lucky. It has a plentiful amount of everything you could hope for.
Handymen brother Valentine (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) are planning on leaving the isolated town of Perfection, Nevada. Before they can get away, they find themselves wrapped up in a monster attack. Multiple giant carnivorous sand worms that are swallowing people whole. Along with the eclectic townsfolk, the brothers must find a way to defeat the creatures.
Simply put, Tremors is a ton of fun. It sets up a simple premise and then spends an hour and a half finding ways to do something new with it. The worms, or Graboids in the Tremors universe, can feel the vibrations of the people above them. Wo much as walking on the ground puts you into immediate danger. And the Graboids are very intelligent. They adapt to different tactics and traps the human characters set for them. With the ability to swallow a truck and take down large structures…no one is safe from the Graboids clutches.
This makes the number of people who manage to survive the whole ordeal kind of disappointing. While it is fun to see the different methods the town comes up with to try and kill the beasts, most of their damage is done to characters off screen. Don’t get me wrong, a ton of people meet their ends in Tremors…it’s just rarely up close and personal. Some more Graboid on human violence would have raised the stakes for the final encounters. Especially when the movie is full of characters that are so enjoyable to watch.
It’s forgiven for keeping things PG-13 because it finds so much joy in just watching a character try to move from point A to point B without alerting one of the worms. When every step is a potential pitfall, and the only plan is to escape, there is an unlimited potential for entertainment. Tremors milks it for everything it can.
The creature effects are another highlight. The giant tentacled worms popping up to try and eat people look fittingly horrifying. They’re full of slime and ooze for extra enjoyment when the town of Perfection manages to take one down. We see guns and bombs work until the remaining creatures adapt to the weapons. Hilariously throwing a bomb back at the gang at one point. The final Graboid is outsmarted by Valentine, flying off a cliff and splattering on the rocks below.
The cast elevates Tremors above its B movie station at every turn. Bacon is at his most charismatic here. Everyone has their moment to shine through the chaos. Michael Gross and Reba McEntire shine as survivalists who are ready for any kind of apocalypse. Fred Ward is a perfect counterpart for Bacon’s loud performance. Everyone here understood the mission was to have fun.
Tremors is a solid action movie, a solid comedy and a solid horror movie all rolled into one. A modern, at the time, presentation of the creature features that were popular in horror in the 1950s. And it still holds up to this day. The creature effects, the characters and the sense of danger provide a timeless movie. Every few years a new movie in the Tremors franchise makes its way onto video or cable or streaming. The latest entry was seen in 2020…thirty years after the release of the original.
Have we seen the last of the Tremors universe? It’s probably a safe bet that the Graboids will return, in some form, again. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Especially for something as fun as Tremors.
Scare Value
Everything just works in Tremors. Great creature design and execution. Wonderful characters populating a desolate town. It’s exactly as serious as it should be and way more fun than it needs to be. Kevin Bacon’s name may get you to watch it the first time, but the combination of a dozen factors keeps you coming back.
4/5
Tremors Links
Streaming with ads on Tubi
Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu
Rent/Buy on VOD from Amazon
Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon
Tremors Trailer
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