Tremors (96 minutes)
Sometimes in life you can’t plan. Especially with graboids taking over your town.
A lot has been written about Tremors and the, let’s say, the less positive side of my brain had me convinced that there was nothing more to be said. But I pride myself on having a broader audience than the average movie website or magazine, and I think there are enough of you curious creatures out there that will still get enough takeaways from my *fresh* perspective. So, let’s strap in and get ready for some sand worms… I mean graboids.
There are a couple of points that make this 32-year-old film so enjoyable to me: the tight-ass script (y’all know I LOVE a tight script), the fleshed-out characters, and the relatively simple premise. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again when combined these three elements make for the perfect 90-minute movie. For those of you who have never seen this movie (boo!) the plot is this: Handymen Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) finally decide it is time to leave the small town of Perfection, Nevada, with its population of 14, behind. On their way out, they discover a series of gnarly deaths caused by a monstrous creature that ultimately traps them and their neighbors in town. Neighbors include Victor Wong, Reba McEntire, Michael Gross (from Family Ties), and Ariana Richards (the girl from Jurassic Park).
The premise never gets too big for itself because it only answers the very specific “whys” an audience needs to follow along. This is actually something I need to take away with my own script writing, I often fall into the trap of wanting to explain everything and feeling the need to give a reason for everyone to be there. This is because I have a toxic trait of noticing missteps in movies like it’s my job. But when done well, omitting certain truths creates a streamlined story that makes sense and doesn’t cause nitpickers like me to ask “If A is happening then there’s no way B can happen too.” And so forth.
With Tremors, the writers have chosen to omit the seemingly most important piece of information-- where do the graboids come from, and why are they appearing now in Perfection? The answers are never revealed. We end the movie without knowing how or why they’ve appeared… and it absolutely doesn’t matter. What matters is that the townspeople come together, under Val’s guidance and with his newly formed leadership skills, to take the graboids out. They discover how to survive. The opposite of this would be something like Moonfall (it is such a piece of garbage by the way) which spends the end of the film explaining why the moon is falling, who caused it, why they caused it, and how humankind can move forward after it. It’s so boring, takes a while, and it doesn’t change anything in regards to our characters. They stay very much the same because this all happens at the end of the movie adding, like, 35 minutes to the runtime. Which, again, is why it’s boring.
You cannot have a plot without characters who matter and connect with their audiences. Independence Day (I have no idea why I have Roland Emmerich on my mind today) for example, is a very plot-driven movie. The aliens invade, they don’t want peace, they are impossible to beat, and characters must survive as things go wrong or become more dangerous. The movie works however because we give a shit if Will Smith is reunited with Vivica A. Fox. If Jeff Goldblum and his dad will get along when it matters. When FLOTUS dies.
You could probably teach a Masterclass on Tremors and character. In a very short window, we get a perfect picture of Perfection (see what I did there) and its townsfolk. They’re a totally bizarre group and we never learn why any of them are there, or why Walter is a 14-year-old living on his own, but it doesn’t matter because we know where they fit in the story’s ecosystem and that’s all we need. The characters are also closely linked to the story, there is no fat in this script. For example, we learn early that the young girl played by Ariana Richards loves to bounce on her pogo stick. We learn later that the graboids can locate their prey using vibrations from the surface. You see where this is going? It makes for a scary moment the audience can either anticipate or be surprised by, and one they can also learn from moving forward.
Similarly, our lead, Val, gets a series of set-ups and payoffs that develop him as a character. At the beginning of the movie, we learn the dichotomy between him and Earl. Earl wants to plan ahead, and Val likes to be reactive to his surroundings. The theme here is one that is beat into us from a young age: you’ll fail if you don’t plan for the future. Over the course of the movie, however, Val starts to see value in his spontaneity and reaction speed. Sometimes in life you can’t plan. Especially with graboids taking over your town. It’s a simple but effective moral for the movie. There can be more than one right way to do something.
Outside of the movie’s excellent structure, it’s just a fun time. You have a diverse, zany, cast that balance each other out throughout the film. And an iconic monster that has no origin, has no goals other than to murder and be absolutely disgusting to look at. Tremors managed to take the beloved 1950s monster movie format and perfect it decades later with imperfect heroes, emotionally intelligent neighbors, and callbacks even for the least observant viewer. I think if you’ve been judging this movie based on its VHS box cover, or the graboids nasty exterior, I highly suggest you rethink watching it ASAP.
Be honest, who has seen any of the Tremors sequels?