Tremors: Shrieker Island (2020) – Review

What can you bring to the seventh film in a franchise that fans haven’t seen before? This was the problem facing the producers of the latest Tremors movie, a series that had been direct-to-video since practically the beginning, and their solution was “Let’s try and rip-off The Most Dangerous Game only instead of unsuspecting humans being hunted it will be genetically modified Graboids.”

In this Tremors installment, we find that a tech-billionaire named Bill (Richard Brake) has set up a unique hunting preserve on a private island off the coast of Taiwan for him and his rich buddies, where he has genetically altered the Graboids so that they are stronger and smarter because, apparently, an armoured burrowing monster wasn’t enough of a challenge. Helping him guide this bunch of weekend warriors – idiots from Wall Street and Silicon Valley – is his best hunter Anna (Cassie Clare), and just how good is she?  Well, she is shown as being an incredible badass with bow and arrow, which is cool, everyone loves Robin Hood, but I do question the idea that this is the best choice of weapon when your prey has an armoured exoskeleton.

Lara Croft vs. Graboid, where would you put your money?

Over on the mainland we have Dr. Jasmine ‘Jas’ Welker (Caroline Langrishe) and colleague Jimmy (Jon Heder) who work on a research site with a group of interns that are doing sciencey type stuff – don’t worry what kind of science it’s not important – but when they start experiencing unnatural seismic vibrations Jas decides to boat on over to Bill’s “No Trespassers” island to investigate. Needless to say, things don’t go well and one of her employees is eaten by a Shrieker – the second stage of the Graboid life cycle stage which has legs and a nasty acoustic attack – and so she sends Jimmy to track down the world’s greatest Graboid hunter, Burt Gummer (Michael Gross).

Was Michael Gross secretly auditioning for Cast Away 2?

What makes little to no sense is sending for Burt Gummer, the poster boy for the NRA, to hunt Graboids but then don’t bother to tell him you have no actual guns for him to use. He’s shown an old WWII bunker that contains some machetes, a couple of flamethrowers and old sweaty cases of dynamite, with the last item being about the only thing remotely capable of hurting a Graboid, but Burt doesn’t lose his gung ho attitude and storm off in a huff, because…I got nothing, this is about the stupidest plot contrivance this series has posited yet. On the plus side, we do get Michael Gross tossing off such fun one-liners as “That ass clown is a skid mark on our collective underwear” which can at least distract us a bit from the idiocy of the film’s plot.

The idiocy of the plot is only matched by the idiotic characters within.

Stray Observations:

• A small Shrieker running through the jungle is basically a low-rent raptor from Jurassic Park.
• We are told that the character of Travis Welker is unavailable to help because he’s in a Mexican jail, more accurately, Jamie Kennedy was too busy recording podcasts to bother returning.
• An island “Alcatraz for Graboids” makes no sense, the creatures burrow through the earth and the last time I checked the earth still connects islands.
• A tech billionaire agrees to take part in a “William Tell” target practice, apparently, hunting monsters isn’t dangerous enough for these idiots.
• Taking refuge in an outhouse when you’re in a horror movie is pretty much a death sentence.
• The acoustic attack of the Shriekers brings Bill and his hunting party to their knees but somehow it doesn’t affect Burt and his friends who are just a few feet away.
• The Graboids have infrared vision, and we even get “Predator POV Shots” which makes sense considering most of these supposed tech billionaires looking like extras from Predator.

They even found a bargain basement Jesse Ventura.

I guess that after six movies the threat of a nigh-unstoppable monster was no longer enough which is why we have this Captain Ahab type villain who spouts such nonsense as “I never call off a hunt” even after most of his paying customers have been eaten, and I don’t care if they “signed a waiver” losing your guests to a monster is not a good business model. I’m not innately against throwing in a human antagonist into the fray to spice things up but the one we get here isn’t just cartoonishly evil but a moron as well. What is even more disappointing is that so much time is spent with this particular villain that we barely get much screen time with the actual monsters.

At this point aren’t they the real stars of this franchise?

Jon Heder is a nice substitute for Jamie Kennedy but even his addition isn’t able to prop up a terrible script – though to be fair it’s still better than Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell as it, at least, didn’t try to pass off the South African desert for the Arctic Circle – and the lack of any decent monster action certainly didn’t help keep fans happy. Tremors: Shrieker Island is a textbook example of filmmakers milking a franchise until there isn’t a drop of creativity left and this particular entry isn’t even fun in the “So bad it’s good” kind of way.