Force Fed Films: Tremors

Not exactly too sure where Jim got the idea to force me to watch "Tremors". But he sold me with one delicious word and a proper noun: Kevin Bacon. But in all seriousness, the movie hooked me in with the monster. A monster that lives underground and feeds off humans, or at least what I like to believe. Also, if I can recall correctly he told me this was a horror movie, and I do like horrors. All my thoughts after the jump.


In a small dinky little town in the middle of U.S of A. Both Valentine (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) are trying to make ends meet. After they discover that this town won’t be any good for them, they try to move to a near by city, bigger and full of more opportunities. But on the way to leave they find a problem; the locals are being killed off one by one. The new scientist, Rhonda (Finn Carter) also discovers some weird seismic activity during these deaths. They soon discover their town has a creature living below it and it preys on humans. Can the town come together to defeat this monster(s)?

To start off, I really like the premise this movie has. It is kind of folky and has a charm to it that I just can’t put my finger one. But the movie development is definitely a plus in the movie. It does not try to hide the monster or build a suspense. What it plays on is the fear of HOW it is going to get you and not WHAT it is. I thought this new play on the monster was cool. And the way they defeat the monster is real child like, but not in a bad way. But more on this a bit later.

Val and Earl

What I want to bring up first is the comedy. I didn’t think that this movie was going to be comedic, but it was. It gave me a few chuckles from time to time. I especially liked the chemistry between Val and Earl, they felt genuine and I would laugh with them. The other supporting actors were fine, though I don’t have any complaints on them, they weren’t particularly interesting. Though I found it funny when it had a country star (Reba) and Grandpa Mori (Victor Wong).

But to come back to the child like factor. I am not sure about you folks, but when I was a kid I used to play a game called ‘Sandman’. Usually played at a park, and if you were on the sand and the kid who was “it” yelled out “sandman”, then the kid on the sand is now “it’. This movie gave me great flashbacks to playing that. Had the same principle, don’t walk on the ground or you’ll wake the beast. It was and interesting problem and had several fun ways to get around that problem. Also the floor is lava.

That's one ugly worm

Now this really isn’t a complaint because I can understand why I was disappointed. As much as I love the monster, with the tentacles coming out of his mouth and cool three lip mouth, it is sad the costume wasn’t all that impressive. Now this was probably due to the limitation of the technology back in 1990. I am sure if I saw this when it was released it would of looked scary. And comparing this monster to the Alien’s mouth in Alien, it is a bit of a let down.
 
To summarize, I liked the movie. I can’t point out anything I hated about the movie, though nothing really stands out. The monster was cool, Val and Earl were great to watch and the nostalgia was fun to ride along with. I would recommend this movie to anyone wanting to see an unusual monster movie, but I wouldn’t tell you to watch this if you wanted a horror movie. It made me laugh more than freak me out.