Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell (2018) Review

Copyright Universal Pictures 2018

OK so no one was asking for this but being the huge Tremors fan that I am I couldn't resist taking a look at the latest film in the franchise.

So what is Tremors A Cold Day in Hell, well as far as I can tell its basically Tremors 6, it stars Michael Gross as famed Graboid hunter Burt Gummer and Jamie Kennedy as his son Travis, Gummer is back in the town of Perfection when he receives a call from a research center in Canada, apparently some of their scientists have been killed by an unseen creature in the ice, and with this Gummer and Travis gear up and take a flight to Canada.

Now first things first it turns out that Universal had a deal with the studio in South Africa where they filmed Tremors 5 to shoot two movies so instead of filming in Canada its shot in Africa and the whole film has this ugly blue tint over the whole thing as they tried to make it look colder. Anyway enough of passing off Africa as Canada lets get back to the plot, on the flight into Canada, the plane is attacked by an Assblaster, which is the EXACT same design as the African kind, but they fight it off and land at the research base. And they really didn't try making it look less like Africa, the whole base is on gravel, in fact the only snow we see is that fake looking stuff right at the start when the scientists get killed. Anyway we meet our character stereotypes for this film and the plot can finally get going, we soon learn that there is a shady government agency opposite the research base and Burt begins to suspect their weaponizing the Graboids. This sounds incredibly cool, does anything come of this, spoiler alert...no. This is never brought up again which is a shame because its such a cool idea but it never gets any time devoted to it. That might be because this film clearly had the budget of whatever they found down the back of the casting couch but then Tremors films are not high budget affairs.

We soon learn that back in Tremors 3 when Burt was swallowed alive by a graboid he was infected with some sort of venom, so now graboids are poisonous, but hang on at the end of the last film, didn't that large African village cook and eat the graboid, how are they not all affected, surely if people in a village of that size all suddenly became ill someone would notice.

But sloppy screenwriting aside, a graboid soon attacks the research base and in the middle of the action, Burt...gets a headache. I see what their trying to do here, the all powerful Burt Gummer has been unstoppable for about 6 films now so we need to slow him down a bit, I'm not watching a movie about giant killer worms for drama, I'm watching it for mindless fun. So Travis winds up saving Burt and it was at this point when I noticed the real reason for this film. Its no secret at this point that Michael Gross

is getting old, he's made comments in the past around leaving Tremors and at one point in the film, specifically when Travis puts on Burt's tactical vest and picks up his machine gun, I knew the point of this film was to pass the torch, from Burt to Travis, when Michael Gross inevitably leaves Tremors theirs a Burt replacement that the audience already have a connection to waiting to carry the next film.

So in order to heal Burt, they require an antidote that needs a dosage of graboid venom

so they must work out, much to Burt's dismay, how to capture a live graboid.

I wont say anymore about the plot because it is honestly worth watching, its quite good fun like any tremors film, but the films first half is rather dull, with a lack of any real action, save for one good scene.

In conclusion Tremors A Cold Day In Hell is worth watching for fans of the series, its most likely the weakest out of the 6 films but it does give what most tremors fans want, for non fans of the series, this is not likely to win anyone over as it does rely on knowledge of past films and characters.

All images in this review were used under the fair use act 1988