How Tremors Can save Hollywood
The lessons of 35 year old horror franchise
I’ve had the Tremors film collection for a few years, but I never watched beyond movie one.
My sister got me the SciFi channel TV series on DVD a while back, and we finally decided to watch it.
After seeing how surprisingly smart it was, we decided to watch the rest of the Tremors films.
Having seen (only) Tremors 1-3 thus far, I got to wondering, “Why are the Tremors movies smarter than their budgets?”
First, did you look at the CVs for the writers? Short Circuit (1 & 2). Batteries Not Included. Et al. That helps.
Strangely, movies 2 & 3 are driven by What we don't know about the monsters “graboids.” Namely, their biology and stages of their life cycle. (Worms to “shriekers” to flyers)
It's like someone weaponized their high school biology classes.
Then they made it into chess. “Humans learned this from the last movie, what's the counter-move?”
And yes, the film makers knew how to stretch a dollar. They put a dollar on the rack and they just kept twisting until the dollar screamed. Mostly by using horror tropes to their advantage — using the Monster’s POV (like Jaws), having Bad Things Happen to secondary characters out of sight, hidden monsters (also Jaws). And pyrotechnics are comparatively cheap.
Of course, there is solid character design. Yes. I mean Burt Gummer. He is so Adam West serious, he’s almost a parody character of a prepper … until everything hits the fan, and he’s not so funny. The secondary characters provide some nice variety, innovations, coming from their own perspectives of a rotating cast.
Funny thing is, if the Hollywood idiots currently driving their industry into the ground took notes, they could probably save movie making. They wouldn’t, because a Tremors film would not make a billion dollars, and they only want MCU money. (Also, in Hollywood’s whacky accounting scheme, a budget has to be more expensive, because if the film's budget is $X, the marketing budget is always $2X.)
Funny thing is, the closest to Tremors-level budget Hollywood has these days may be the John Wick franchise (Stunt men are cheaper than excessive CGI). If Hollywood took notes on THAT, they'd make a mint. But Chad can't be everywhere. And stuntmen turned directors, sadly, don't grow on trees.
Anyway, that's all I've got for today.
Go away now.