The little town of Perfection, Arizona, is about as far from perfect as they come. Time-worn buildings, blistering heat, and no water source in sight; all the townspeople still need is a plague of locusts. Well, they’d probably welcome a plague of locusts after their town is invaded by a group of vicious worm monsters in Ron Underwood’s 1990 hit Tremors. The massive creatures, or, “graboids” as the townspeople name them, erupt from the ground and devour their unwitting victims, and they are on a warpath through the valley Perfection is in. Once the people of Perfection learn that they are directly in the graboids’ path of destruction with no way out, they decide the only thing they can do is fight back. It’s the humans v. the graboids, which side will come out victorious?
Fortunately for the townspeople, on their side they have the gruff but dependable pair of Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Basset (Fred Ward) on their side. These fearless prairie dogs help keep the citizens informed on the hunting tactics of the graboids and help prepare the town for the attack. The acting talents of Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward really helped make their characters believable. Whether it is their vocal tones or their body signals, they always appear to be really feeling what the characters should be feeling in their current situations.
However, there is one more character that helps make the film exciting, but at the same time adds a good deal of humor to it. The artillery-savvy gunman Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) fills the iconic monster movie role of “the guy with the gun.” His home, located just outside of perfection, is built just like a military base, complete with thick concrete walls and an armory willed with a menagerie of different firearms in the basement. From handguns to a cannon, he has just about every form of artillery known to man, and he wastes no time in unleashing hell on the graboid invasion. Gross’s excellent portrayal of such an iconic character easily doubles the excitement factor of the movie, all without taking the focus away from the actual plot.
The film has music and graphics which are consistently perfect for the situations at hand. Like all good films, it has fairly consistent theme music in the background that quiets down during scenes of important dialogue and picks up the pitch and speed when the action gets going, making sure to reflect the mood without stealing he spotlight from the plot or characters. Because it takes place in a large desert region, the only complicated special effects the film really requires are the ones used in making the images of the graboids, so the filmmakers were able to do a great job at that aspect and match it with the aesthetic quality of the rest of the film.
Entertainment: 10; Acting: 9; Effects: 8
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