Tremors (PG-13)
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This came out in 1990. I think I saw at least part of it, or one of its sequels, on TV sometime in the 90s, maybe, but I don't really remember anything about it from that time. I finally got it in a DVD set of four movies of the franchise in 2020, and it's a couple nights after watching it now that I'm starting my review, and again, I can't remember much about it. I still look forward to watching the other three movies in the set, but beyond that, I have no idea if I'll care enough to ever watch the other movies (or the short-lived TV series) in the franchise.
Anyway, there are these two handymen named Valentine "Val" McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward), who do just about every possible labor job around the extremely small town of Perfection, Nevada. One day they meet a graduate student named Rhonda LeBeck, who is doing seismological tests in the area, and she's been getting some very strange readings. And Val and Earl soon start finding various people around town who have died mysteriously. It's not long before they discover there are giant underground creatures who are attracted to vibrations and end up killing people. Some of the locals debate what to call the creatures, and a store owner named Walter Chang's idea of "graboids" is the one that catches on. There are a few other locals, including a survivalist couple, Burt Gummer (Michael Gross, from Family Ties) and his wife, Heather (Reba McEntire). The two of them have a huge cache of guns and explosives, which come in handy in fighting off the graboids. And I guess there were a few other adults who made no impression on me at all, as well as an annoying teenager named Melvin, and a little girl named Mindy (Ariana Richards).
I really don't know what else to say, except I think it's supposed to be a comedy, but I found it mildly amusing, at best. I also thought the graboids were scariest while still underground, so you couldn't see them and didn't really know what to expect. But I guess it wasn't a bad movie, if you're not expecting much. It was reasonably enjoyable while I was watching it, even if I don't find it very memorable.