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Tremors
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]
Tremors
Monster Horror / English / 1990
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
A Quiet Place seemed to me to be an inferior attempt to do what Tremors already succeeded at nearly 30 years previously. Does it still live up to my memory?
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Yup.
I seemed to have reviewed Tremors 2 on here, but dunno if I ever reviewed Tremors 1 and can't be bothered to look for it so here goes:
Tremors is by no means a masterpiece, I think it would have to be a very different sort of movie if it wanted to be that, but that movie appears to be A Quiet Place, but that movie is no masterpiece.
Basically none of my problems with the previous movie are present here. About the only thing A Quiet Place managed to do was work in a narratively convenient deaf character to add a relevant new perspective to the concept of the sound-based monster movie, and that ended up about as subtle as Signs having that one character who has the bad habit of not finishing glasses of water in the movie about monsters that are weak to water.
At least in AQP's favor, it wasn't an Autistic Savant-style superpower and an actual detriment to the character in question, but nonetheless, it was to every character's advantage to be able to communicate in sign language, so it's still kinda the same ****.
Tremors dispenses with the pretentiousness of a pseudo-silent film and goes about as B-movie cheese as you can get without being a straight comedy. We follow two characters with reasonably distinct personalities; divided by age, united by job and cynicism. Just two ultra-small-town hicks tryin' to make their way and just as they become fed up and try to leave the aptly named town of "Perfection", victims suddenly start popping up and the monster is gradually revealed, trapping them in the middle of nowhere.
I said before that the series added dimensions to the monster by having it underground, but I entirely forgot that the initial reveal of the monster was a fakeout and what they thought was the killer turned out to be one of three tongues of the killer.
Resourcefulness plays an important role in this sort of movie, what would YOU reach for if the floor suddenly became lava and anything that made noise became a target for the monster?
Can't mention this movie without Redneck Man and Redneck Woman who are both just a couple generations of inbreeding shy of being too cartoony to take seriously. Fortunately the town of Perfection is populated by these two mega stereotypes: Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist Guntoting Preppers. Defacto Libertarians. Go figure, when the **** hits the fan, they just happen to be the best people to turn to. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Anyway, they're both fun, and clearly I'm not alone, cause they got the guy to come back for multiple sequels as the main protagonist.
There are 2 characters I got slight issues with though. One is Main Lady. It never occurred to me before, but Main Lady is chronic case of the Captain Carters, meaning she exists for no reason other than to be the standalone girl geek character, rabidly espositioning her guaranteed-to-be-true theories and confusing the less-that-thoroughly-educated characters for laffs.
Kevin Bacon's character has an Overnight Romance with her and it's complete trash as you'd expect. The movie opens with him disappointed to find her, a seismology geek of average attractiveness, and it ends with him laying into her with a kiss... with zero chemistry or actual scenes of mutual interest leading up to it.
There's also Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf, which is exactly that character, and is exactly as sympathetic as that character. Why he didn't die, I have no idea, even the smallest possible character arc for him would have been better than **** all.
There's also Pogostick Girl, who I don't really have a problem with as a character, but she literally only seems to exist to wear headphones and play around on a pogostick, making her a glorious target for the monster in that one scene. After that though, she seems to virtually disappear from the movie. She's still there... I think... but she never gets any lines, any action, any camera focus, I completely forget about her as soon as she falls in with the rest of the survivors.
Overall, it's really hard to complain about much in this movie. It was creative, thoughtful, funny, and engrossing. The practical effects were great. A classic modern monster movie.
I'm inclined to think that some aspect of the presentation or soundtrack could have really sent this over the edge. Maybe if they had somehow made Perfection with very clearly defined features and partitions for the characters to work around, rather than "Oh can we run for that bulldozer off in the distance?" that would have made for more interesting setpieces.
Either way, real solid.
I seemed to have reviewed Tremors 2 on here, but dunno if I ever reviewed Tremors 1 and can't be bothered to look for it so here goes:
Tremors is by no means a masterpiece, I think it would have to be a very different sort of movie if it wanted to be that, but that movie appears to be A Quiet Place, but that movie is no masterpiece.
Basically none of my problems with the previous movie are present here. About the only thing A Quiet Place managed to do was work in a narratively convenient deaf character to add a relevant new perspective to the concept of the sound-based monster movie, and that ended up about as subtle as Signs having that one character who has the bad habit of not finishing glasses of water in the movie about monsters that are weak to water.
At least in AQP's favor, it wasn't an Autistic Savant-style superpower and an actual detriment to the character in question, but nonetheless, it was to every character's advantage to be able to communicate in sign language, so it's still kinda the same ****.
Tremors dispenses with the pretentiousness of a pseudo-silent film and goes about as B-movie cheese as you can get without being a straight comedy. We follow two characters with reasonably distinct personalities; divided by age, united by job and cynicism. Just two ultra-small-town hicks tryin' to make their way and just as they become fed up and try to leave the aptly named town of "Perfection", victims suddenly start popping up and the monster is gradually revealed, trapping them in the middle of nowhere.
I said before that the series added dimensions to the monster by having it underground, but I entirely forgot that the initial reveal of the monster was a fakeout and what they thought was the killer turned out to be one of three tongues of the killer.
Resourcefulness plays an important role in this sort of movie, what would YOU reach for if the floor suddenly became lava and anything that made noise became a target for the monster?
Can't mention this movie without Redneck Man and Redneck Woman who are both just a couple generations of inbreeding shy of being too cartoony to take seriously. Fortunately the town of Perfection is populated by these two mega stereotypes: Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist Guntoting Preppers. Defacto Libertarians. Go figure, when the **** hits the fan, they just happen to be the best people to turn to. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Anyway, they're both fun, and clearly I'm not alone, cause they got the guy to come back for multiple sequels as the main protagonist.
There are 2 characters I got slight issues with though. One is Main Lady. It never occurred to me before, but Main Lady is chronic case of the Captain Carters, meaning she exists for no reason other than to be the standalone girl geek character, rabidly espositioning her guaranteed-to-be-true theories and confusing the less-that-thoroughly-educated characters for laffs.
Kevin Bacon's character has an Overnight Romance with her and it's complete trash as you'd expect. The movie opens with him disappointed to find her, a seismology geek of average attractiveness, and it ends with him laying into her with a kiss... with zero chemistry or actual scenes of mutual interest leading up to it.
There's also Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf, which is exactly that character, and is exactly as sympathetic as that character. Why he didn't die, I have no idea, even the smallest possible character arc for him would have been better than **** all.
There's also Pogostick Girl, who I don't really have a problem with as a character, but she literally only seems to exist to wear headphones and play around on a pogostick, making her a glorious target for the monster in that one scene. After that though, she seems to virtually disappear from the movie. She's still there... I think... but she never gets any lines, any action, any camera focus, I completely forget about her as soon as she falls in with the rest of the survivors.
Overall, it's really hard to complain about much in this movie. It was creative, thoughtful, funny, and engrossing. The practical effects were great. A classic modern monster movie.
I'm inclined to think that some aspect of the presentation or soundtrack could have really sent this over the edge. Maybe if they had somehow made Perfection with very clearly defined features and partitions for the characters to work around, rather than "Oh can we run for that bulldozer off in the distance?" that would have made for more interesting setpieces.
Either way, real solid.