Tremors – A Cold Day In Hell JBTF10...

Estimated Read-Time = 56.6 minutes

JBTF10? Not Worth Watching.

Review synopsis: Okay. Let’s just...think for a moment here. What should we expect from the sixth installment of the beloved Tremors franchise, where (in theory) gnarly, giant underground worms hunt and eat people or, in poor Nice Lady’s case, most of people. (Why couldn’t it digest THAT particular arm? No. Focus…)

From that description, is it fair to expect anything at all? Yes. Why? When you go to eat at a restaurant, aren’t there foundational elements you expect to experience? Sure, not every restaurant out there can be The Cheesecake Factory. But, even the most modest of establishments people enter with the intent to exchange money for sustenance has its own bar to clear. If it can’t, or won’t, why does it exist? Is it even a restaurant?

Of course, I’m making an assumption here that we all go out to eat to enjoy the experience of going out to eat. Some restaurants exist simply to fill us up. Some of these restaurants hope to do this as cheaply as possible. Restaurants like these — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Arby’s — don’t just offer competitively cheap food; it’s food engineered to appeal to us on a very visceral level (especially you...you beautiful bastard...I wish I knew how to quit you…).

So, even though the trade in this case isn’t a very healthy one for we the consumer, it still matters that we’re the ones doing the eating. Is there a restaurant out there that makes no effort to appeal to its customers? Is it a stretch then to say that a fundamental part of what makes a movie is what it should be trying to do with/for its audience? And, if this is so, can we call it a movie if it makes no effort to appeal to its audience? Have we gotten a sense in these first 10 minutes that this, the sixth run in the Tremors series, is a movie that doesn’t care about appealing to us? I don’t honestly know.

But I am left with the feeling that what transpired, save almost everything about Michael Gross’s performance, did so with indifference to its audience. Predator, as I said three years ago at the start of this review, made me feel queasy as I watched it. Because I believe it wanted me to. It wanted to draw us in. Thrill us. Capture us. Toy with us. And, with us, build toward an epic and satisfying conclusion. It’s not perfect. And this isn’t about budget, for I can’t imagine Tremors had a budget even close to Predator’s.

But Predator and Aliens had intent, much like their titular creatures. They weren’t just there. So the fact we would spend a couple hours locked in the darkness with them mattered. Perhaps starting in minute 11 here, the Tremors creature (which we’ve already seen clearly) gets its groove back and ends up, ironically, giving the rest of this movie life. (Tremor Deaths…HELLOOOOOOOOO.) But with what we’ve seen, your time might be better spent waiting for Jamie Kennedy to finish that beer.

Stars: Michael Gross Jamie Kennedy, and Stephanie Schildknecht as “Aussie”

Directed by: Don Michael Paul

Written by: John Whelpley

Check streaming availability via: JustWatch

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JBTF10 Review: Tremors – A Cold Day in Hell

Found by Netflixing: The Predator

When I was a kid, my folks used to take me up to my dad’s parents’ house in Michigan to stay for a month or two in the summer. They lived on a lake! A lake that a had a huge rock in it that my cousins swore was an asteroid! As a kid, this always seemed like a long time to stay with my grandparents. Why wouldn’t my parents want to stay too and enjoy the lake...stand on the slimy asteroid? I’m a parent now. I understand.

One summer day, I must have been driving my grandmother particularly crazy because she took me to the Grand Rapids library. They had videos. And Grandma said I could pick any movie I wanted. As one might have guessed based on my asteroid-exclamation point above, I was a kid who was into space stuff. So when I saw the following box cover, I knew I’d found my movie:

Oh, how cool. A movie about aliens. Space stuff, right? My dad’s mother was born during the Great Depression, so no faulting the absence of alarm bells as I handed the box to her to check out. If anything, she probably just checked the run-time to see how much peace and quiet she’d be afforded that afternoon.

The only VCR in their house was in the basement. Fan-tastic. No one to bother me down in the old, musty, dark of their Michigan basement while I enjoyed my super-cool space movie all by myself.

I’m pretty sure I was scared before the 20th Century Fox logo ceased its bombastic intro. And I certainly was sitting in a puddle of trauma juice by the time the almost-dead woman cocooned to the wall with the rest of the missing colonists proceeds to jump-scare the Space Marines before the tiny little screeching fanged penis explodes out her chest.

And then the motion trackers start beep-beep-beeping faster and faster as the alien hive comes alive and starts bearing down on our confused and terrified heroes, all while the poor, confused lieutenant struggles to maintain a control he never truly had from the confines of the APC, until Ripley barrels in to save what’s left of the squad.

I had no idea, until that afternoon, how absolutely fucking terrifying a movie could be. Or how powerful an experience a well-made movie can be. No wonder I watched the whole thing. No stopping and coming back to it. No finding someone to watch it with me. No bathroom breaks. As absolutely horrified as I was by that film, I was also totally captivated. Because as a film (the writing, the acting, the pacing, the music, creature design…etc), it is an absolute warhorse.

Actual footage from the author’s dreams for the next 7 years…

There would be other scary movies I’d end up seeing as a probably-too-young kid after Aliens, but I could never make it through them. Puppet Master 2, for instance. Damn those little murder puppets…Scared me. So I turned that one off. I turned a lot of scary movies off. Because, my darlings, I don’t enjoy being scared. And I don’t know why other people do. And Aliens to me was unique in that way, until years later in junior high when I saw Predator.

I had a good friend back then whose parents dubbed everything they rented. Every. Thing. Their living room was literally covered in VHS tapes of movies. And when we’d have sleepovers, we’d fill ourselves with Cheetos cheese popcorn covered in EZ Cheese and binge on movies until it started to get light outside.

I can’t remember most of them. I saw RoboCop during one of those evenings. That alone made the lasting genetic scarring I carry with me from the Easy Cheese worth it. I think I saw Killer Klowns From Outer Space and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie there. (I think? Still not sure if that double-feature was real or a fever dream.) But Predator became my new Aliens, more impressive since I was, at that point, what I considered to be a very mature adult.

Predator, like Aliens, left me absolutely gobsmacked. And, like Aliens, a lot of Predator’s punch is due to its rock-solid construction, which includes a clever bit of subversion that demonstrates to us the extreme level of peril our main characters find themselves in.

Both films begin with an incident caused by the monster(s). This triggers the need for an elite team of seasoned badasses to respond. We get a sense of their confidence and history through their banter and alpha-doggery. Both groups are certain they’ve seen worse. Here is where Predator differs though. The Space Marines in Aliens walk right into the buzzsaw of the alien hive.

This is fine, because the unfortunate, chaotic slaughter of 90% of the badasses we just spent about 10 minutes with shows that the aliens-as-antagonists exists on a whole new level. As the survivors, formerly the best of the best, rally and begin to realize exactly how much kaka they now find themselves in, the weight of the alien threat hangs over us. And it’s how the filmmakers tease and play with the menace they’ve established that cements us to our seats.

Predator also begins by giving us time to hang with cigar-chomping Arnold Schwarzenegger and his team of mostly super-macho commandos. We get a sense of some basic personalities as they gear-up for their own mission.

But instead of getting shredded during their first mission, it is they who proceed to shred. The team descends on a jungle-base filled with cannon fodder whom Arnold and company proceed to terminate with extreme prejudice. Our heroes are SO GOOD that when they shoot something that explodes you into the air, you DO A FLIP as you die. The fact that these moments border on the comical pulls the film into a fun, light (albeit rated R) place. Right or wrong, Aliens never had time for this.  

So, when we get a sense that some unexplained horror is out there in the jungle, and we hear a chilling story of how this is not the first time it’s been here, and when members start to have nervous breakdowns, and get their chests blasted open, and they all realize something is hunting them and picking them off one at a time, and they can’t figure out HOW, until they DO (and knowledge being a problem unto itself), and spinal cords, mud, fire...oh my.

Both movies do end with nuclear explosions, btw, and they both are really great. But if Aliens is a brontosaurus of good movie making, then Predator is a sexual tyrannosaur. And both have a lot of sequels. And they probably don’t need them. But when we love the originals so much, we feel compelled to meet their children. Even when, in the back of our heads, a clear echo of the original is what we’re hoping to enjoy.

At the time of this writing, The Predator is in theaters directed by Shane Black, who played the commando Hawkins in the original film. The Predator is the third film in the franchise, or the 5th if you count the two Alien vs. Predator films (but you might not want to).

Again, we’ve got a team of elite soldiers who have to face off against the titular baddie. And again, it would seem the film seeks to establish a worst-case-scenario and then subvert it to establish a whole new level of menace. Also Keegan-Michael Key is in it. So I hope the whole thing proves to be a success. We need more KMK in the world right now.

As is always the case, yes yes, Predator won’t be on Netflix at the moment. But searching for it did reveal another sequel to an action horror movie that was very enjoyable (which surprised many people if memory serves).

Tremors! Tremors…6? Whatever. Tremors! This is great, because the original Tremors was enjoyable for a lot of the same reasons we’ve touched on with Aliens and the original Predator (i.e., menace established early, but teased and allowed to build until the full nature of the baddie is eventually revealed in all of its horrible glory).

Fun!

Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell also (thankfully) appears to once again star Michael Gross who was part of the great cast of the original film (which included Kevin Bacon AND Reba McEntire!!!).

Okay. Thanks to Aliens, Predator and a decent dose of my childhood trauma, we’ve got a sense of how to set up a really great action horror movie, so let’s see what this…6th…entry in the Tremors series can do with its First 10.

Right at the start Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell begins with super-sweeping, epic-awesome Universal Pictures opening. I just noticed it says “A Comcast Company” under the Earth, which I’m trying not to read too much into. But damn, as far as production company intros go, Universal’s is up there. Uh oh. Let me check something quick. Yup. As a viewer, I’ve come to see these production company intros as a cinematic amuse-bouche. (I did have to re-look that up.) The good ones set the stage for the movie you’re about to see. Take your seats, folks. Quiet down. Our adventure is about to begin.

This is less common now, but to this day, I sit up a bit straighter when I see this Universal opening, or the percussive Twentieth Century Fox intro, and, by the way, RIP Orion Pictures.

We then fade up on a very snowy scene as we see that this film is more directly the product of “Universal 1440 Entertainment.” I make a note to figure out what that is later, mainly because the movie is trying to tell me that we’re soaring above a vast, snowy, remote location. And, despite the abundant flurries we’re seeing in the foreground, my brain isn’t buying it.

Is this just not-awesome computer graphics? Maybe? But as we continue to swoop over some sort of (completely open air?) base-camp-tent-thing, a suspicion dawns on me. This is sand. We’re flying over a desert right now, and they’ve color treated this and added computer flurries to try and pass this off as an arctic wasteland. I may be wrong, but I’m also Iowa-born and have been living in Minnesota for over a decade. I don’t think there’s such a thing as “snow dunes.”

But hey, why am I being a jerk and assuming we’re even on Earth. Aliens spent a great deal of time on the half-terraformed Ceti Alpha VI. Predator took place in the exotic, oppressive South American jungles. Even the original Tremors unfolded in the almost-Martian Arizona desert...which we may in fact be looking at. But, whatever. Who knows where we are. Amongst the infamous Snow Dunes of Pluto, maybe.

We swoop toward and around a group of people and their artic...open air...tent. Far from Pluto, we are informed that we are, in fact, in Nunavut Province, which is in Canada, which is at the (on the?) 60th parallel. In addition to footprints from the people here (wearing sweaters and no hats, btw), there are also tire tracks in the sand. SNOW. It’s snow. Tire tracks in the snow...Which is odd. Because I wouldn’t think you’d drive folks in just sweaters out to the 60th parallel, drop them off, and leave? But, as always, what do I know.

We cut to a guy doing a thing with a machine to the ground, then to a blonde guy wearing radical white sunglasses. He must have a radio on his collar, because he starts talking into his collar, and we learn he is a New Zealander ? Maybe?

“...bit of a ‘eat wave here in the Arctic…”

Just now? You just noticed now? Good thing the snow dunes don’t seem to be very affected by the heat wave. Wait. There’s snow flurries flying about. So I guess, um. I don’t know.

We cut again to the guy standing behind Sunglasses.

“Welcome to the new normal,” the guy replies. “We’re standing on a gigantic ice gap and it’s 32 fahrenheit.” Huh.

Then we cut to a Nice Lady. She, at least, is wearing a knit stocking cap. “Welcome to the Arctic summah…,” she with an Australian lilt.

Cutting back to Sunglasses, we see that it Nice Lady who’s out on the dunes, with a metal detector or something.

Sunglasses may look concerned, but we can’t really tell. Because he’s wearing sunglasses.

“Fahrenheit,” he says into his collar talkie. “Wait, did you just use that antiquated imperial measurement?”

“Yeah. I did, Sweden,” the other guy sasses back over his collar talkie. (Whoopsie. I guess I should have known due to the sweater Sunglasses is wearing?)

“I’m from Norway, A-hole, not Sweden,” Sunglasses replies. (All this isn’t helping the movie…)

“Is there any difference?” the guy has to ask.

“You Amerakens...so out of step from the rest of the world. You’re a scientist, for God’s sake,” Sunglasses just has to say.

To which the guy replies, “Glaciologist.” (That’s a type of scientist.)

Anyway, since things are getting so heated here, the woman with the metal detector has to chime in.

“You two knob-jockeys sound like a coupl’a Sheilas,” she says.

“[Let’s] get these core samples and get back to the outpost,” the guy chuckles. Haha. Oh man...good times…He begins drilling into some ice he’s been standing on this whole time.

But after only a few seconds of drilling, there’s a low, explosive rumble. The sled dogs that are now clearly right outside of the open tent begin barking, then howl-whining. That’s never good.

Sunglasses may look concerned. “Guys, we hit something,” he informs everyone via his collar. It seems like they only just started drilling. But maybe they had been working on these core samples before the movie started?

“This is some mean ice,” the guy says, as both the drill and ominous music struggle to do their respective jobs.

We cut to Nice Lady, suddenly serious, “That’s why they call it the old cold.”

“Yeah, well I reckon just increase the bit speed. Let’s blast right through it,” Sunglasses helpfully suggests.

I guess the guy does this. I can’t tell? The whirring continues.

Cut to Nice Lady. “Uh, guys? I’m getting a seismic spike in the ice?”

We cut to a POV of Nice Lady’s metal detector to prove she isn’t lying.

Hey, and you know what. I was super being a smartass when I called her scientific device a metal detector. But here, we can clearly see it is an MD-301011. Which I googled. And discovered it’s actually a metal detector. You can buy it on Amazon for about 80 bucks, but it isn’t eligible for Prime. It doesn’t say if one of the modes can help you detect seismic spikes with the Old Cold. But it does come in gold. And the reviews are both short and cryptic.

The drilling continues, dogs still barking in the background.

“It’s probably just an isostatic rebound,” Sunglasses suggests to Nice Lady. But the music would beg to differ.

Suddenly we hear some deep cracking and the camera starts to shake. Cut to Nice Lady, her metal detector beeping and buzzing warnings.

“Like hell it is…,” the guy says.

“I’m getting a big-ass magnetic anomaly on my screen,” Nice Lady says. According to Wikipedia, the ice, water, and mantel rocks involved in isostatic rebounds (also known as post-glacial rebounds) can exert a gravitational pull on things around them. But I choose not to spend the time needed to determine if shifts in said gravity can be detected by an 80 dollar metal detector.

“Whatever it is, it’s alive,” Nice Lady decides to conclude. “And it’s big.”

But Sunglasses isn’t having it. “There’s no big life forms that live in solid ice,” he counters.

The guy chimes in, “Maybe the backscatter effect brought up a rock formation…” Yeah!

“Yeah, maybe it’s the Easter Bunny,” Sunglasses says. Norwegian or not, he doesn’t seem like a very good leader.

“This is not a rock,” Nice Lady says, “and it sure as shit isn’t the Easter Bunny.”

Kind of wish it was the Easter Bunny. That would be a fun surprise. Because we’re pretty sure something’s about to happen here. Which is interesting, since all the beeping (and barking), in theory, is a lot like the brilliant use of the motion trackers from Aliens. Except here we feel no tension. And, unlike both Aliens and Predator, we’ve taken no time to establish the competency and/or personality of our characters here. It’s just a guy in sunglasses, an American scien...sorry, glaciologist, and an insensitive Nice Lady. So whatever’s about to show itself here has no context with which to judge the baddassery/horror/danger it represents.

Of course, this can backfire. I’m thinking for some reason of the scene in Independence Day when Will Smith welcomes the alien to our planet by punching it in the face while saying as much. But we’ll save that for another time, because the ground begins shaking under our heroes here, throwing them off balance. There is a quick cut to a monitor we haven’t yet seen, which is showing...something. Then more quick cuts to scared dogs. Then a cut to the drill which is struggling to continue burrowing that hole down into the ice, up through which some sort of brown goo begins to seep. “Get it out,” Sunglasses commands, and the American jumps in to help.

Meanwhile, Nice Lady gives up monitoring the magnetic anomalies with her metal detector, setting it down in front of her as she kneels down, peering very, very, very, very close to the ground beneath her. Perhaps seismic spikes emit a unique and captivating scent.

A crack begins to form in the ice, presumably mere inches from her face. We cut back to Nice Lady, who may or may not be trying to peer deeper into the crack. Instead of, you know, running. But hey, I’m sure she’ll be okay.

Oh.

She might not be okay.

As a giant, shrieking behemoth explodes from underneath where Nice Lady was just standing, Sunglasses screams something into his collar. The dogs panic, breaking free from their chains and dashing away across the finely grained...snow.

I think at this point, Sunglasses begins screaming, “Aussie! Aussiiiiiiiiiiie!” into his collar over and over.

We cut back to where Nice Lady had been standing. The creature is nowhere to be seen. But then we hear a… burp? Two items are ejected into the air from wherever the creature now is. When they land, we see they are Nice Lady’s severed arm and the MD-301011. (4 out of 5 stars. Quite durable.)

Sunglasses “sees” this and turns to the guy, commanding him to remove the drill from the oozie, butterscotch hole. “C’mon, Yank!” Sunglasses helpfully adds.

Something happens (magnetism?), causing the sled to slide off. In the three seconds I’ve been thinking about this, it makes less and less sense why. So let’s assume it, like dogs, is scared and fleeing for its life. In doing so, a cord becomes entangled around the guy’s legs and he’s pulled away helplessly as the sled makes a break for it.

Sunglasses tries to run after him, screaming, “Yank! Yank! Yaaaaaaaank!” But the sled is too fast. The guy is pulled up and over a snow dune, and then, by the sound of it (I.e., AAAAAHHHHhhhhhhh….,” plummets off an invisible cliff to his death.

Sunglasses pulls up short, “Yank?” Silence…

Then, something just below the surface begins burrowing toward Sunglasess, displacing the grains of snow behind it as it advances. And here we go! If I remember correctly, this was part of what was so fun about the original Tremors. It wasn’t until about halfway through the movie that you saw the whole creature. But you did get a lot of creepy, burrowing assaults just like this, which sold the subterranean menace while showing us little or nothing in the process. This approach to horror is particularly effective, in that we end up completing the picture of these monsters in our own heads, making them much more terrifying than what can be clearly shown on screen.

From an extreme low shot behind Sunglasses, whose legs are helpfully wide apart, we see the burrowing creature tunneling right toward him. This would be a wonderful place to cut to black...right at the last second...preventing the shot from resolving, like a dissonant chord left to ring out.

Instead, Sunglasses turns and runs. We get a cool slow-motion shot of the beast keeping pace right behind him. Sunglasses trips and tumbles down the side of a very large dune of snow. He stands, wheezing as he tries to catch his breath.

Suddenly, the creature explodes from the dune before him, knocking him down as it rears up into full view. It’s uh, yeah. It’s a big worm thing.

The “he’s about to die” music swells. Time for one of those famous Tremors Deaths? ™? Bring it on movie.

As Sunglasses sits up and begins to scream, the approaching creature is reflected in his sunglasses. Oh…You could have just done that. Instead of showing the whole...okay.

And then….and THEN…

CUT TO: MOVIE TITLE, IN CASE YOU FORGOT.

Bah. So much for Tremors Deaths I guess? (Sorry Nice Lady, your playful bigotry will not be missed.)

I will say, the score takes a minor key turn here, which is nice and ominous. And then, Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell cuts to...the desert.

Someone in an old GMC pickup truck approaches...us...but also a run-down old building that maybe is a gas station, convenience-store, oasis-in-the-middle-of-nothing-nowhere-type places. We see a beat-up sign advertising burger for $3.49, chili dog for $2, and fries for $1. This makes me miss my Iowan childhood for some reason…

Panning down to a window, we see the truck approaching. The music continues to be ominous.

Cut to a man laying a scoped rifle (!) onto a counter. The sound design is interesting here. Because in the process of the gun being placed on the counter, then propped up onto what we’ll learn is a sandbag sitting atop a cash register, there are a lot of “gun sounds,” clicks and clacks and ticks and tacks, sounds you might hear in a montage of a weapon being assembled or cleaned.

But this rifle is just being set down and picked back up. It doesn’t break the shot by any means. In fact, quite the opposite...these noises enhance the “gun-ness” on display here, underscoring what we’re seeing with aural information. Done well, it goes unnoticed, allowing us to be more immersed in the movie. I’m sure this phenomenon has a cool name I cannot pronounce or spell without help. I’d also wager it’s a similar phenomenon smart people are tapping into to “trick” the brain into finding emergent VR experiences more believable.

In the meantime, the truck doth still approacheth, its driver most likely unaware that they are most likely about to be shot dead.

We cut outside of the store to a charming sign establishing the proprietor's feelings on taxation, to which many spent shell casings have been affixed, left to dangle in the dry wind.

The truck slows to park just outside the store, giving us a glimpse of a sign that reads City of Perfection - Est. 1902. Aside from noting its elevation is 2185 (ft.), we see the population, which was once 14, has been struck through, and marked down to 2 by hand.

Inside the store, Michael Gross (yay!) pulls back the bolt of his rifle, which makes a shotgun “cocking” sound. He takes aim at what I assume is the front door.

Cut to an extreme low-angle shot of the front of the truck, clearly a U.S. government license plate that reads TAXMAN. I did not know that government employees can get personalized license plates. Perks.

The camera pans over as the door opens and BOOTS hit the ground.

Cut back to an overhead shot of Michael Gross, really just aiming the hell out his rifle. In the corner, a fan blows little streamers that have been attached to it. Do the streamers do something specific? Or are they just used in movies to help signal that the scene we’re watching is HOT?

Cutting back outside, we pan up to see the owner of the boots is an older man wearing one of those southwestern takes on a suit, including bolo tie and cowboy hat. Considering the tone of the music at this moment, he may be the Devil or death incarnate.

Back inside, Michael Gross adjusts a large wheel on the side of the scope. Taking a guess that this building is only 20 to 30 feet from front door to counter, it seems a bit unnecessary to need a scope at all. But the movie is really drawing out what’s about to happen here, so let’s try to stay in the moment.

We cut again to see the front door is wide open, which would explain why it’s so hot inside the store. The sun is low enough that the suited man is silhouetted as he struts into the doorway.

What is Michael Gross aiming at? If, excuse the pun, it’s a straight shot from the counter to the front door, the suited man would see upon entering that someone is aiming a large rifle at him, right? Or maybe it’s so bright outside that...oh, here I go again. Sorry, sorry.

UGH. But then we cut and push in to Michael Gross very specifically aiming at something...so we start to feel like this movie is about to punk us.

Quick cut back to the man continuing to enter the store, which causes some alarm to go off.

Quick cut back to Michael Gross...who FIRES…

Quick cut to a paper target on a wall we haven’t yet seen. And a pellet-sized hole appearing dead-center in one of the bullseyes. Bright light from the...wall?...behind it?...pours through the hole.

The music drops the ominous and starts to go Sadtrombone.com…

The suited man reacts to the alarm and the two sensors just inside the door that seem to be the source of it. He casts a patronizing glance toward Michael Gross. “Really, Gomer? A motion detector?”

Michael Gross raises a remote control and turns off the motion detector, which makes a car alarm–activation sound in the process. He then flips a switch, causing the target to advance toward him down a zip wire. It’s neat. I want one of those.

We push in on Michael Gross as he unclips the target, gazing at it the way God might have gazed upon the first plate of nachos pulled fresh and bubbly from the oven of creation, and say-sighs, “Perfection…”

The suited man, who’s holding a folder of some sort, approaches the front of the store chuckling. “Man alive, it’s hot as balls out there.”

We cut back to Gross, looking wary. “Hands where I can see ’em, partner.”

“Oh, gee whiz, Gomer. You know who I am,” the suited man responds. “It’s me, Special Agent Dalkwed.”

You know, I’m not certain that’s a real last name.

We cut back to a medium shot of Gross conveying gentle menace, “Do it, Agent Dickweed,” he says, resting a hand on the pistol holstered at his side. Do what? Did I miss something? What did I miss?

Dalkwed raises his hands stiffly, or maybe just half-assedly. “You threatenin’ a federal officer?”

“That all depends, taxman…,” Gross replies, picking up his rifle and placing it back behind the counter.

“Sticks and stones…is that a pellet gun, Gomer?” Dalkwed uh, retorts. It’s here I look it up and see he’s not saying Gomer, he’s saying Gummer, the last name of the character Michael Gross is playing/reprising here. Sorry.

“YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS IT IS,” Gummer shoutplies.

“Huh, since when do you play with toys?” Delkwad sassplies.

It’s none of your damn business,” Gummer says through clenched teeth. Then, looking down at Delkwad’s lower-zone asks, “Are you armed?”

Oh Lord...I hope these two are a couple. Let them be THE two inhabitants of the dusty, forgotten old town of Perfection, and what we’re seeing here is the elaborate daily dance of two men who’ve found love in each other over the course of the previous five Tremors films and who, despite having escaped the large slimy jaws of worm-death, still cannot look into each other’s eyes and simply say, “I love you.”

“Of course I’m armed,” Delkwad replies and, helpfully, the camera pans down to show us the revolver, badge and tummy held in place by Delkwad’s belt. “All special agents with the United States Treasury are armed. You KNOW that!” Is Delkwad getting frustrated with the screenwriter on our behalf?

Why are we here?

What are we doing?

Oh how I long to return to the endless, drifting, Canadian snow dunes found only at the 60th parallel. The Sheilas...the Yanks…remember?

Why did we cut away to this store and very long conversation?

Yes, we must at times cut away from the action. In Aliens, once the terrified survivors have escaped, we cut away to much quieter sequences within the temporary sanctuary of the ex-colonist's habitat. In Predator, once Dutch leads his team away from the smoldering remains of the guerrilla base, the following sequences all take place within the sweltering calm of the jungle. And yes, a lot of talking happens. But in their own ways, both scenes, while giving the characters (and we, by proxy) a moment to catch our breath, begin to reinforce the True Danger everyone is in by that point.

Here, we haven’t cut away to take a breath, so much as undercut any momentum the opening scene managed to establish.

This is despite having already served up a full-frontal of the worm creature and having drawn out the establishment of plot and character detail so uneconomically that one character is maybe-probably yelling at the screenwriter. (You know it’s true.) Point being, we’re already spreading the butter pretty thin on the toast here. C’mon! This is Tremors 6. Let’s get on with it, yeah?

“Special Agent,” Gummer is incredulous as he picks up a coffee mug. A CAMO coffee mug. OH I SEE. THIS GUY LIKES GUNS. A LOT.

“This here is private property in an open carry state,” Gummer concludes with a sip of coffee, which was probably sourced from a Vietnam-era MRE.

“And you wouldn’t happen to have any financial interest in said property, now would ya?” Dalkweb sneers.

“Nope,” Gummer says, definitely slapping a Cubs ball cap on the counter in front of him and then placing it on his head. “Go place a lien on someone else…”

“Oh, I already have,” Delkwid counters, and oh my God what are these two talking about?

Randomly, something about Gummer’s ball cap knocks the taxman off his stride. “Hey,” he says, gesturing up at Gummer’s head. “You’ve changed teams!”

“No,” Gummer fires back, “just hats.”

This moment is weighted in just such a way that it must be some service to the Tremors Superfans who are fully engaged with the whole Tremors Multiverse.

“Well, it was a miracle the Cubbies won that series,” Didwekld responds wistfully. “And frankly, Gummer, that’s what you’re going to need.” He takes a few more steps forward before dropping the bomb, “A miracle.”

“’Cause right now…”

(Oh. There’s more.)

“...your ass…”

(Yes?)

Dankneb (finally) holds the folder out in front of him and shakes it with attempted menace in Gummer’s general direction.

“...is in my hands…”

Well.

It would seem.

To be.

Indeed, a cold…

...day here in hell.

We cut to Gummer, “Your POINT, Dickweed?”

Yeah. What he said.

“Your tax position has been deemed frivolous by the IRS. And your property has hereby been seized.” As Dalkmalk slams the frivolity folder down on the counter between the two men, the movie helpfully provides a BOOM sound to, you know, sell the moment.

“What?” Gummer says. “You can’t.”

“I can!” Dwallstall says, all macho. “And I did!

As Gummer opens the file and begins to page through, Dalwek rounds the corner on his taunting. “The IRS owns you, Gummer, until such time that we can arrange for confiscation of any and all items deemed suitable for government auction.”

“You parasitic sonofabitch,” Gummer seethes as DeeDee struts over to large promotional cutout of Gummer positioned in the corner.

“And your uh, well-ENDOWED battery of firearms might make a raise enough to make a dent in your failure to file penalties and interest,“ Deckard says, while doing this:

Time to pour some wine.

One sec…

Okay. We can do this.

“I detect the odorous stench of schadenfreude, Agent Dickweed. I WILL SEE YOU IN COURT,” Gummer opines.

“Court? Hoohoohoooo…,” Agent Dickweed laughs to himself, then turns to leave. “We’re waaaaay past that, Gummer.” But he doesn’t leave. Turning, he says, “WAY past.” Then he leaves.

“OUTTA HERE..,” Gummer, I don’t know...bellows?

“Goodbye, Gummer,” A.D. says as he almost exits the store. Maybe if Gummer is quiet he’ll leave.

“And don’t let the door dislodge that POKER up your ASS,” Gummer says, unfortunately. Because it stops the agent from exiting the store and this scene and my life.

Agent D turns at the doorway and extends his middle finger into the air saying, “Oh, I’ll be really careful…,” And...then...LEAVES! HE LEFT! The talking! All the talking can stop! Where is the worm? Bring on the worm!

We hear a harmonica riff. Gummer stalks about the store as we see Agent Agent drive off outside. Gummer walks toward the window, seemingly unsure of what to do.

“Another satisfied customer?” asks a voice. Oh no. More talking. Who.

The question, asked off screen, startles Gummer somethin’ fierce and, as he wheels around, he almost pulls his pistol on…

Jamie Kennedy?

Wait. More talking?

What is this shot?

What?

Is this what dying feels like?

We cut back to Gummer who rests his hand on his sidearm as if considering whether or not to fire.

We cut back to Jamie Kennedy.

“Did ya miss me?” he asks, like a naughty baby.

“Yeah, like a boil on my ass,” Gummer replies. And hey, despite where little we’ve achieved to this point in the first 10 minutes, I have to say, Michael Gross is committed to what he’s doing here. He is a man who has been given what he’s been given and he is WORKING.

“I see you got the supply rec,” he continues as Jamie Kennedy saunters away and over to the cooler, seemingly unaware he’s aggravated Gummer’s boil.

“Oh yeah. That [ace texts?] [ape’s ex?] was a charm,” Kennedy says as he fishes a Corona out of the cooler and uses an opener chained to the door to get his Island on.

“Welcome HOME, Sonny Boy,” Kennedy continues sarcastically, “ Oooo. Good to see you. How long’s it been? Hmm, four or five weeks? K. How’d the video shoot go?”

“Fascist jackals,” Gummer says, interrupting Kennedy’s expositicasm.

Jamie Kennedy peers out the window over Gummer’s shoulder. Outside, the taxman is inexplicably still in the process of driving the 10 feet past the window, somehow.

“Ooo. Government plates? That can’t be good,” Kenny says, between sips of beer. “Let me guess. IRS?”

“They got no right to walk in here and seize a man’s property,” Gummer (who, as we are soon to learn, is also called Burt) fires back, pushing past Kennedy and away from the window.

“C’mon Burt, you’ve been flipping off the feds longer than Wesley Snipes. It’s gotta be a record...” Kennedy quips, sort of oddly. Or it feels odd. But I do not understand why.

“This is the very thing that sparked the Boston Tea Party,” Gummer seethes.

Then both men yell, “NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!”

Apparently this is not the first time Gummer’s ranted about such.

The two men have a moment. Kennedy gives him a sarcastic, know-it-all look.

“It’s a good thing Jodi decided to stay in that law firm in Reno, huh,” Kennedy ask-states.

Gummer looks away, wiping his nose, so as not to betray how this Jodi comment has hit him, or where. (Psssst. The heart!)

Kennedy moves on almost immediately, remarking that it looks like Gummer’s been squatting in the store. His beer is still quite full considering he’s taken 5-7 swigs at this point. Maybe he’s gotta drive later.

“Nobody’s squatting,” Gummer responds, fire back in his belly. “I’m managing the store now.”

Kennedy continues. “Really? Congratulations. And I really like what you’ve done with the place. You’ve really put the hyphen back in anal-retentive...jeez.”

Okay. Just a moment ago, something about the store’s environment would lead a sipper of Mexican beer to surmise that its sole occupant is living there illegally (i.e., looks dumpy, used, lived-in, less than professional, etc.). But (it’s also) now so spotless and pristine that we’re quipping on the proper use of hypenization with regards to put-downs. Yanks. Am I right?

Anyway, what was this review about again? Oh yes. Monsters. And terror. Tension. I remember all that.

“I can do without the sarcasm...SON,” Gummer says to Kennedy, walking over to the 2-wheeler and boxes Kennedy had wheeled in during his God-shot.

I think Kennedy’s character is Gummer’s son.

“Oh c’mon, Burt. Don’t be hurt,” Kennedy freestyle raps? “Alright? Now that I’m back, let’s hit that reset button, huh? Put some fresh content up on Youtube™. Try and resurrect that Bullzeye brand...huh?”

“I’m not doing prepper (pepper?) videos anymore, my director quit on me.” (It’s prepper. But the idea of Michael Gross doing something called Pepper Videos made me laugh. A bit. Just a bit of laughing…)

“No, he didn’t. He’s right here. He just had a small mental health breakdown,” Kennedy says into his chest.

You and me both, dude.

Mid-thought, something catches Kennedy’s eye.

“What’s up with that hat…”

Ope!

“Wuhuhuhwait a minute,” Kennedy stammers. “Did you change teams?”

Gummer blows his top. “No, JUST HATS!”

Ah. Haha.

Hello again, joke. I’ll bet you’ll be back at least one more time in this movie.

Wait. Or, what is it called...the hat might be a...Chekhov’s Gun! I’ll save you the link, here’s the skinny:

So, see? I bet the HAT appears again...later, when the worm comes....because, remember, it couldn’t digest Nice Lady’s arm and the metal detector. Right? So, it’s like in Predator where Dutch, uh, uses mud, because Predators see in infrared. Which is like in Aliens, Bishop is an android. (Sorry, spoiler alert.) But, wait, Ripley knows he is an android in the beginning. But, oh wait. Yes. Exactly. Yes.

There it is; we know, WE KNOW, he’s NOT human in the beginning. So in the third act, he’s the only one who can climb through the tunnel to reboot the thing — precisely because he’s NOT an alien. See what I mean?

“Take it easy, Burt. I know you hate taking direction and my style is way too improvisational for you, okay?” Is improvisational directing a thing? I really need to finish my Martin Scorsese Master Class.

Meanwhile, Gummer is slamming pills dry, right out of the bottle because, as he indicated to Kennedy, his son’s giving him a headache. This seems like a movie thing to do. I used to occasionally pop an Advil dry, out of sheer laziness. But then I read an article on the Internet about how this guy got a pill stuck in his throat. No, he didn’t choke. Worse. Through some sort of reaction (be it chemical or physiological, or both), the pill ate a whole through his throat. Hey. That would be a pretty gnarly thing to put into a horror movie. Break up the talking. A bit.

“C’mon, Burt, meet me in the middle,” Kennedy says, following Gummer as the latter pushes his way past this Pepper Video content pitch.

“Make sure you put five bucks in that cashbox,” Gummer says, striding towards the...exit? Of the scene???

“For what?” Kennedy yells after him.

Gummer ducks back inside. “That beer doesn’t come free…”

Turns out Gummer isn’t leaving.

: /

He’s locking up the shop. (So the scene can end?)

Kennedy objects, “You’re closin’ up? Dude...it’s not Miller Time yet. You can’t find your beach…”

Those two things are different things. Did they just let him improvise his lines?

“Time for some shut eye,” Gummer says storming past him. Yes! Go, Michael Gross!

End this.

It’s nap time, GODDAMMIT!

“Since when do you shut-eye in the middle of the afternoon?” Kennedy replies.

Sorry!

Sorry...

“Since you showed up,” Gummer says into Kennedy’s face, then walks off...to...the other side of the store.

Kennedy looks hurt.

“You wonder why I go to stripclubs,” is said by he and ????!??!?!?!!

And...with that...line(?)...we have 10.

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