Let me start out by saying I'm a huge fan of Tremors. I've been watching the first movie for literally most of my life. They would play it at least once a week on an old local network. The first two are ingrained in my memory. The third and fourth installments were pretty strong too. Not quite as great, but still imaginative, with the fourth delving into old west/prequal theme. A little weird sure, but great in its own way, giving back story to the Gummer's and Perfection itself. Oh and some heavy handed pseudoscience explanation for the graboids, nothing new to the series.
I'm also aware of the old scifi original series.... I recall the few episodes I've seen being pretty awful. But I figured that was due to it being an off shoot with a much lower budger. ($500 an episode seems right) Well little did I know it was just foreshadowing.
So, the other night I stumbled across the trailer for the new (now cancelled) tremors TV series starring Kevin Bacon. I was like holy shit! He hasn't been around since the first movie, and last I heard totally regretted "acting" in that movie. So I watched the trailer and realized quickly one thing.
Where the Fuck is Micheal Grossmen?! Burt Gummer has been in every god damned creation to ever bare the Tremors name. What the fuck is all this about?! (Still no idea, because I got distracted by our main subject.)
This all lead me to discover that they've actually released Tremors 5 and 6 without telling me. (Those bastards!) I immediately found the trailer, than my hear sank. It.... Didn't look good. not like the B movie status that birthed the cult classics. Just not good in writing, casting, or their shitty CG.
So.... Let's start off with the cast. There was only 2 names I recognized in the opening credits. Micheal Gummer reprising his role as (a now obviously old) Burt Gummer. And Jamie fucking Kennedy. (AKA 2002 Paulie Shore) I prayed in vain that he wasn't going to be the side kick.... Of course he is. His pay check was probably 1/10 of the budget. All the secondary characters don't even matter. They're not even flushed out enough to be tropes of anything. Just generic, boring and I never bothered remembering their names. Although I sometimes found the bush pilot to be entertaining, during his limited screen time.
The plot: Convoluted and boring to say the least. Burt Now makes survivalist youtube videos and sells his own products like BarBQ sauce and stuff, which never comes up again in the plot. Anyways, he gets contracted to kill some assblasters in south africa. What are graboids, which are found nowhere else but North America, doing in Africa? I dunno, some ancient split of genealogy and geography or some shit. So Burt and his new camera guy go down to take care of shit.
There's something about a nature preserve and a local tribe of people. There's some awful drama with a love triangle and Burt and Kennedy butting heads. All very boring and pointless. Some people die here and there, but in unmemorable ways. Just really failing at drawing anyone in to this festering dumpster fire.
Creatures: For some reason there's no shriekers in this film. There's ass blasters and a couple rarely seen (thank god) graboids. (SPOILERS: And some how their tongues which have detached and grown brains, because fuck everything at this point.) All of the creatures look different due to evolution and shit, which okay, makes sense. But I feel like they could have done a much better job flushing out the designs. Graboids are now shorter and fat. Yet can also leap out of the ground like a fucking shark and swallow people with absolute precision. They also have developed the trait to make the ground above them rocket into the air for 12 feet and stunning CG glory (of a correct representation of this movie, which is most certainly a diarrhea shit fountain.) The effect was originally done with a buried volley ball being towed behind a truck. And it looked just fine. But I guess that's just too much effort for these guys. Their tongue thing just pisses me off to no end too. It makes no fucking sense. If my dick fell off, it isn't going to grow a mind of it's own. AND BEFORE YOU START on about propagation of the species. It makes no evolutionary sense why it would develop such a convoluted method of transformation and egg laying, and than also have a secondary one like this.
This movie mainly focuses on the Shriekers though. They too have received a massive make over. They have a new body structure where instead of rocket fins, they now have bat wings more or less. The eye shields are fucked but whatever. The mouth though.... They tried to do a weird circular mouth like a cookie cutter/sarlacc thing. It just comes across and ridiculous. The originals were much more menacing with much less. Speaking of, That's something I didn't like was that there were no puppets used. They just went full CGI with every frame of the creatures. And it all just looks awful College level indie film and shit.
Dialogue: I honestly believe with all of my heart I could have written better dialogue for 90 percent of this movie. It's just abysmal. Their one liners are just so bad. Not even in an entertaining way, just completely fucking awful, ran into the ground, distorted variations on already bad lines. The conversations between characters never felt organic and was often just unnecessary. The banter and interactions with fuckface McGee and Burt were just full of cringe. I really can't overemphasize how awful Jamie Kennedy made this movie. His inflection delivering lines half the time made me picture Paulie Shore (Who I am no fan of) He just had no redeemable features which reflected in the character he played. Jake or some shit. (SPOILERS: Turns out he's Burts son. Which my GF caught onto about 20 minutes before the reveal. I wasn't paying that much attention to their Jerry Springeresque trailer trash back story plotline) But seriously every moment he was on screen made me want to kick him in the balls.
ETC: The pseudoscience spouted off was pretty incredible, even for this series.
The climax was fucking stupid. It felt very rushed and unflushed. I even suspect they wrote themselves into a corner and than just brought a character back from the dead because they had no other option. It also seemed to have left a few loose ends.
Some of the call backs to the prior movies were entertaining.
Anyways, I've run out of writing and ranting steam. Yeah I plan to watch the 6th movie tonight (Fucking antartica?) But probably won't do this sort of thing again. I'll just accept my sadness at the death of a great series and drink myself to sleep.
TL:DR - This movie makes me feel terrible for Micheal Grossman, knowing that he had to deal with Jamie Kennedy and all of the directors bad decisions.
3/10 would rather get hentai fucked by a graboids tongue tentacles than watch it again.
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