Tremors is a stone cold classic monster movie. A sequel was inevitable, but up until now (2025), I’ve never seen Tremors 2: Aftershocks. It’s the same writers, so we’ll be okay… right? Fred Ward returns as Earl, but Kevin Bacon is absent, his star having risen probably too high by 1996 to go chasing giant subterranean worms again. Plus he was busy with Apollo 13. His character Val too has moved on, but Earl is still stuck in a battered trailer on his own. Until Señor Ortega (Marcelo Tubert) comes asking for help. The worms, or shall I start calling them Graboids are at it again, this time in Mexico and with the offer of some money, Earl goes hunting. His new sidekick is his biggest fan, Grady (Chris Gartin), but they’re strangers and this reflects on the performance, there’s no chemistry and everything feels a bit forced. The location for their adventure is a remote oil refinery. All the workers have left due to a few of them getting pulled into the ground. The only ones left are Kate (Helen Shaver) and her assistant Julio (Marco Hernandez). They play the roles that Rhonda did last time out as the scientists, but let’s be honest, there’s not much scientific depth here. Earl and Grady go out in the truck with some dynamite, blowing up Graboids, making $50k a piece until they once again find themselves being hunted. It’s all a bit slapstick. There’s no danger and it makes little sense. Really I t’s an absolute mess and not even Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) and his yeehaw antics can help. He rocks up in a literal army truck loaded with enough ammo to make the A-Team blush. I’d better get used to Burt, from Tremors 3 onward, it looks like he’s the anchor. His wife Heather has had enough though and left him. In fact it’s quite staggering how many jumped ship before this started filming and it’s hard not to wonder what might’ve been. Burt last time round had all the best one-liners. Here though more is asked of him and it’s clear that Mr Gross isn’t the best actor. At nearly an hour in, it does final find some energy as the worms mutate and get smarter, which is more than can be said for the humans. The ‘Shriekers’ are smaller, more mobile above ground with legs, like prehistoric dogs that self spawn and see with only infrared. It’s an interesting twist and they look pretty good for the era and the budget, but it’s like the entire original premise is scrapped on a whim and poorly reinvented mid-film. Where the first film surpassed its B-Movie boundaries, the terrible acting, stunted dialogue and pretty none existent plot consign this to the pile marked disappointing. I fear this might set the tone for what’s to come.
4/10
Comments