3379. Tremors (1990)

Starring: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter

Director: Ron Underwood

Running Time: 96 mins

Tremors is an American film about a group of small town residents who fight to survive against mysterious man-eating underground monsters.

While it has all the ingredients of a cult ‘90s movie, there’s something about Tremors that feels a little unsatisfying, almost unfinished to me. It’s a simple enough movie, but it fails to deliver genuinely entertaining thrills or properly striking horror from what is actually a rather enticing premise at first.

For the most part, the film is a fairly harmless affair. Content with a good bit of horror action every now and then interspersed by some simplistic (perhaps too much so) character development. It’s never a particularly exciting watch, and apart from its visually gorgeous setting, it often feels like it squanders what could be a thoroughly entertaining and unique horror.

Tremors is never meant to be scary, yet nor is it meant to be immensely campy. It aims for a middle ground that’ll satisfy both horror fans and general audiences looking for something a little more light-hearted. In that, it’s a fairly pleasant affair, if not a film that feels a little bland, almost unfinished in its desire to tell a full horror story.

Cult movies are normally the ones where filmmakers went out of their way to tell a story in the way they wanted, without any studio interference. Tremors, however, feels like a film which has been subject to a bit of studio interference, coming across as what appears like a rather watered-down version of what could have been a properly bonkers or properly terrifying affair.

Overall, I was rather disappointed by Tremors. An unremarkable film that never strikes any of its genre beats particularly sweetly, it’s a harmless watch that has the odd satisfying moment, but fails to deliver enough to fully delight horror fans or general audiences. So, that’s why I’m giving it a 6.1.