With some science fiction, it’s hard to decide when things officially cross over into the territory of self-parody. While there are obvious parodies like Spaceballs and loving parodies like Galaxy Quest, the category of sci-fi movies, or sci-fi adjacent movies that someone parody a new genre that the movie itself is creating, are basically unheard of. That is, except for Tremors.
When this 1990 film dropped, it basically invented a new kind of horror movie. Before Tremors, you could kind of figure out what a tongue-in-cheek monster movie looked and felt like. After Tremors, it became less clear. And that’s because Tremors invented its own subgenre, in which other slightly funny monster/sci-fi films could only be compared against it.
Set in a small town called Perfection, Nevada, Tremors focuses on Val McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) who, like redneck Luke Skywalkers, really want to leave their desert hometown. But, what makes Tremors great, is that instead of letting these handymen set out for a life of adventure, fighting monsters elsewhere, everything stays focused in this little town.
Now, the trope of a small town getting beset with monsters is nothing new, and it wasn’t new when Tremors hit in 1990. But, what made the movie creative and unique was the idea that the monsters were subterranean sandworm things, which the movie calls “Graboids.” While self-styled sci-fi experts have long joked that the Graboids are basically miniature versions of the sandworms from Dune, the danger posed by these creatures in Tremors is more akin to something like Jaws. Instead of a bloodthirsty shark, the Graboids function like sand sharks, a kind of natural predator that isn’t remotely natural. And like Godzilla, we get the impression that these creatures have always been with us, lurking in the depths of the Earth. But unlike Godzilla, we’re not really meant to take any of this too seriously.
Tremors is in on its own joke right from the start, because the idea of sand-dwelling creatures that attack a small town is patently ridiculous right from the start. And the movie barely tries to explain why this is happening at this exact moment and not before. There’s no heavy-handed rumination as to why the Graboids are attacking now. It’s simply enough that they exist and, like their Dune cousins Shai-Hulud, the Graboids are attracted to vibrations, so it’s really just the fault of the stupid humans for settling in this desert to begin with.
The Kevin Bacon doesn’t work on ‘Tremors.’ And that’s why we love it.
Snap/Shutterstock
The lack of any kind of social commentary about the Graboids is part of what makes Tremors so charming. Yes, we’ve got Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter), a graduate student who is studying seismology, but it’s not like she’s there to give any veneer of real science to the movie. Instead, Rhonda’s function in the plot isn’t too different from Kay (Julie Lawrence) in the original Creature from the Black Lagoon; she’s there so our hero, in this case, Kevin Bacon, can have someone to flirt with.
But in defense of the movie’s inherent cheesiness, none of these tropes are done in poor taste, per se. Because Tremors creates its own internal logic — its own sense of Tremors-ness if you will — it never veers into a place that is too serious for criticism, or too dumb to stop watching. In other words, once you accept that this film walks the line right between totally implausible and completely self-aware, you’ve realized that the movie can do no wrong, even if it is doing little right. Like many groundbreaking genre mash-ups, none of this should work on paper. But the magic of Tremors is that everything does work. And 35 years later, this over-the-top classic is even more worth your time than ever before.
Tremors is steaming on Paramount+.
This post was originally published on here
