If you recall, a few weeks ago, I posted up the podcast with my co-host David over at That Moment In where we have a random chat about Tremors. If you missed it, you can find it HERE!
While I don’t watch a whole lot of Kevin Bacon movies, the few that I have seen has proved that he is a great actor with a widespan of skills for many different characters. Tremors was mentioned to me a few times before but the most impactful was during a Q&A session for Cop Car at the Fantasia Film Festival this year after the captivating thriller called Cop Car. You can check out that review right HERE!
No more link-ups! Let’s head into the review! 🙂
Tremors (1990)
Director: Ron Underwood
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire, Robert Jayne, Charlotte Stewart, Tony Genaro, Ariana Richards, Victor Wong
Natives of a small isolated town defend themselves against strange underground creatures which are killing them one by one.-IMDB
Tremors is definitely a treat in the creature feature genre. In Netflix, its categorized with the cult classics. Interesting because I guess I can see why it would be there. However, it is one of the more fun creature features despite its age and campiness. The characters excel at balancing the humor and the fun aspect. While it takes a little while to get the story going in the fun and adventure area, it does work well in building its story as we follow the main characters, Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) discover the threat that has been hitting obscure areas in town. As the characters add more, we get some more sophisticated characters that add to the group and turn this into a fight against the creature for survival as they put their heads together and add a little boom here but discover that the creature is actually quite intelligent.
Is Tremors scary? No, that it isn’t. But then, a lot of creature features aren’t exactly that scary. They may have been when I was younger, like Deep Blue Sea but this one has some tense moments even though it never holds long enough to make it feel too endangering to the characters. Maybe that isn’t true because with the modern creature features, we always expect someone to die in whatever way and when we can’t determine when and how they will die and just how the creature is, there is a sort of underlying fear. Definitely the beginning hit that horror territory more than the second half. As we hit the second part, it really lands into the adventure part as they find creative ways of evading this creature lurking under the ground. Its entertaining and its hard to not want to cheer the characters on at this point. My favorite is definitely when they think up the whole pole vaulting escape plan. While it is fun, it is also rather fast paced as they try to outwit and outrun the creatures.
While Tremors is a lot of fun, there are some unnecessary and forced bits. Its never enough to make me roll my eyes or get frustrated. In the end, it still delivers a satisfying and enjoyable horror comedy creature feature enveloping all the subgenres I typically like. Its fun and adventurous, and the characters and their cheesy outdated dialogue. Sometimes its that sort of dialogue that resounds and makes it even more entertaining. Its definitely one I wouldn’t mind rewatching especially if its watching Kevin Bacon’s funny reactions and dialogue and then the gun toting couple and the super campy creature effects. Like it a whole lot!
Have you seen Tremors? Do you like it? Are a fan of creature features?
Tranquil Dreams 