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movie review - Tremors

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I love this film. It's like a redneck Jaws, and I mean that two ways. Obviously, it has a man-versus-monster theme. But moreover it is a triumph of character-driven, high-impact story-telling. This might take a bit of explaining, but here goes.

It features two yahoos in some dusty patch of the western US. One's a young, athletic All-American blonde yahoo with big plans. The other's an older fellow with long experience who credits himself with being the brains. But the reality is neither is going anywhere. In fact, the opening scene shows that while one has a lighter and the other some smokes, neither has both and they begrudgingly share to get the morning started (at about the crack of 10:30 from the looks of things). They do an excellent job of showing us the character of these two by having the former jump the truck up and down yelling "stampede" to wake his buddy, and the older man grousing and warning the younger man about the dangers of a real stampede. So much characterization with so little effort!

But the entire movie is made with as much skill. When there's a noisy generator early in the movie, we later learn that it's in-fact Checkov's Noisy Generator. When there's a brash pubescent boy who's up to no good early in the film, we later see him get into trouble. When their lousy truck is shown to have an exposed axel early on, we can be sure that that axel is going to be grabbed. That's right, we can be sure the axel will be grabbed. This movie gets to the point so fast that we have already met the core characters and established that something's up in the ground at the five minute mark.

And then there are the gun nuts. In perhaps the finest case of plot-driving comic relief we have Reba MacIntyre and Michael Gross as intelligent but paranoiac conspiracy theorists - this was in the days when that sort of thing was a legitimate threat to society. When I say "plot-driving" I mean I think the story hinges on them as clearly as it does the noisy generator.

Look, I could go on for hours. Just see this movie.

Strongly recommended. A favorite. I can't believe this is the first time I've reviewed it.