Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018)


Burt Gummer, dying from Graboid poison, and his son Travis must go to a remote arctic research station in Canada's Nunavut Territory, in order to go up against a new batch of Graboids to save Burt's life.

REVIEW: The Tremors franchise is one of my all-time favorite movie franchises, right behind Jurassic Park and Star Wars, and is easily my favorite B-Movie franchise. I reviewed all of the other Tremors movies earlier in the year (Tremors, Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, and even the short-lived TV series), so I figured it was long overdue to finally get a review out of this year's newest sequel, Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell.


Sadly, this is an entry I honestly have no idea how I feel about it.

On the one hand, I loved all the callbacks to previous movies and previous characters - The town of Perfection shows up (albeit, only by showing us one single building that looks far more desolate and alone than it did in the previous movies) and that one building that shows up is Chang's Market, Jodi from Tremors 3 and the TV series gets mentioned, Burt's ex-wife from the original movie gets mentioned, Burt himself is going through a kind of PTSD-sort of deal (mixed with something biological) that directly relates back to something that happened in Tremors 3, and Kevin Bacon's character, Valentine, from the original movie, and the girl he ended up with, Rhonda, have a daughter and that character is in this movie. I loved all that kind of fine attention to series continuity.

In addition, the new setting, the Canadian Arctic, was a visual breath of fresh air for the series after all those desert-set locations. The acting is good, the special effects are mostly great (save for a few questionable shots) and the overall product still remains fun as hell.


Yet, I still have a good handful of issues here. No Shriekers, yet again. Just the Graboids and Assblasters forms, and with no real explanation given as to why these are the African offshoot of the species from the last movie and not the regular versions. In addition, the character of Kevin Bacon's daughter is utterly wasted. She's not even the main female character and other than a couple conversations she has with Burt, she does almost nothing but stand around in the background. Why have this random background extra be that legacy character and not actually have the main female in the movie be her? It was such wasted potential.

And speaking of cast members, this movie has one of, if not the largest cast for any Tremors movie, yet there's hardly any deaths in the movie and the rare few that we do get, minus one, are all nameless background extras that we don't care about anyway. Lastly, the movie plays out way too simple and straightforward. There are no twists, no surprises for the characters, no new forms to shock them, no real suspense moments. It all plays out exactly as you expect, with nothing to surprise you the viewer, or the characters, along the way.


Ultimately, the movie is still lots of fun, don't get me wrong there. But it adds nothing new to the series whatsoever, nothing new to the Graboid mythology, hardly any death scenes, and it utterly wastes the potential of having the child of an oldschool Tremors character. Jamie Kennedy is still fun though, and actually less annoying than in the previous movie, so people should be happy with that, and Michael Gross as Burt is always enjoyable to watch. The chase scenes are still a blast and the new location is a nice visual switch from the norm, so even though I have a ton of issues with this one, it still does just enough right to be an entertaining entry.

I just hope they do a bit better with the next one.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Comments

  1. I clearly hated this movie way more than you did! Mind you, I thought the fifth one, a few issues though it had, was one of the best sequels (maybe even the best). I hated the comedy in this movie, as it felt forced and awkward juvenile. Character arcs from the last film are ignored and all the new characters are boring.

    However, it is a Tremors movie so all that wouldn't be too bad if the action was any good. The editing in this film drove me nuts, and trying to figure out the geography of most of the action scenes was impossible. The effects were okay but the movie is more interested into turning Burt into a joke, as oppose to the one telling the joke to be focused on its story or characters.

    I felt this movie was a massive slap in the face to all Tremors fan in the worst way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I loved the 5th one, right behind Tremors and Tremors 2 for me. And while I didn’t hate this one nearly as much as you, I did find it a pretty big disappointment overall and think it’s the second-worst one in the series (Tremors 3 is still worse IMO).

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    2. For me, the third was not trying as hard, so it was less obnoxious than this latest entry.

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