My Review of "Tremors"

Tremors came out back in 1990. I remember the big hype about this movie back when it first came out but I was a little kid and was afraid of horror movies. I never gave it the time of day. Much later in my life I still avoided it not because it was a horror movie but because it looked really cheesy compared to today's movies. Still there's still some people that say Tremors is worth watching. Since it's freely streaming on Netflix why not check it out? This is what I thought of it.

This movie starts out with two hired hands Valentine and Earl. They're friends looking to grow their business outside the small town they live in. As the town is pretty small they pretty much know everyone and they all know them. After years of working in this town they want to set off to the city where they can expand and make themselves bigger. Unfortunately fate wouldn't let them go so easily.

Trouble starts to pop up around this little town. There are a number of mysterious deaths that the stumble upon. This strip mall sized town seemed to have either a serial murderer on the loose or an unnatural phenomenon. After meeting with a student seismologist studying their town they realize that some giant creature is burrowing in the ground killing the citizens one by one.

Things get even worse when they realize these "Graboids" as they would call them, are getting smarter. There's more than one of these Graboids and each time they fool one of them to escape death the other Graboids learn a lesson. Now it's up to the rest of the town folk to work together to either eliminate these creatures or escape the small town altogether.

Although the special effects in this movie are quite crude to today's standards it was adequate to tell the story. Back in 1990 they didn't have CGI to help them create special effects so everything was done physically. It's kind of fun to see what they were doing back in the day. The art that was involved in creating the Graboid creatures were original and fun. It's pretty cool seeing the ground or flooring being uplifted as our heroes are running away from the predatory creatures.

It's also an interesting premise to have these attacking creatures, although some of it kind of reminds me of elements from the movie Dune. They use the same concept of gigantic worm-like creatures that attack based on vibrations that you make on the ground. Tremors added a twist where the Graboids would learn from each other so that they wouldn't fall for the same trick twice.

They had a good cast of actors to play in this movie. I particularly liked Burt and Heather. These two are married paranoid survivalists. They're pretty much prepared for the end of the earth so they have tons of food, water and guns. You always kind of have this feeling that Burt is going to get killed at any moment because of his cocky attitude. In his defense both Burt and Heather have a huge part in fighting the Graboids.

Although the Graboids do seem creepy, they aren't really scary. That's me talking in 2020 though. Back in 1990 I'm sure these special effects were top of the line and would have scared tons of people. There just didn't seem to have too many scares. The movie was more of a cross between a comedy, action and thriller. I think anyone can go watch this movie and have a ton of fun.

Overall, I did like this movie much more than I had anticipated. It had me laughing and cheering throughout the movie. After watching this movie I kind of feel like I missed out because had I watched it back in 1990 I would have been more impressed by the special effects. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. It is very entertaining and worth a re-watch. People shouldn't sleep on this movie it's worth seeing.