
Written by: Scott Buck
Directed by: S.S. Wilson
Produced by: Nancy Roberts
Reviewed by:
J.T. Jeans
This review contains MINOR SPOILERS for the film Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins tells the story of Rejection, Nevada -- a sleepy little mining community that falls under siege by those pesky earth-burrowing worms with a taste for soft pink bipedals. When the workers refuse to return to the mine after a number of men are killed, Rejection runs the risk of becoming a ghost town before it's even gotten properly established. It is left up to the remaining residents, a hired gun, and the mine's austere owner to seek out the root of the problem and put things right before Rejection is retired for good.
Set at the tail end of the 19th century, Tremors 4 acts as a prequel to the original Tremors and introduces us to the ancestors of several characters from the original film. Most notably is upscale dandy Hiram Gummer (Michael Gross), great-grandfather of everyone's favorite paramilitary paranoid, Burt Gummer. Hiram is very deliberately written as the antithesis of his great grandson -- he is very prim, very proper, and has absolutely no inbuilt sense of self-preservation. I expect Burt would have been appalled to learn that someone in his family was as utterly unprepared as Hiram.

In comparison to the previous film, the supporting cast is markedly better this time around. The acting on display here isn't the best you'll ever see, but the characters are believable and the performances are strong enough that you actually care what happens to these people. Michael Gross gives a suitably layered performance as Burt Gummer's naive great-grandfather, and Billy Drago does what he does best as Black Hand Kelly, the man who sows in Hiram the survivalist seeds that we see in full bloom with Burt Gummer one-hundred years later.
This is the first film in the series not written by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock -- TV scribe Scott Buck handled writing duties this time around -- and while the film lacks the same brand of wit that was present in the first two films, the humor works better here than in Tremors 3. The characters deliver fewer one-liners, and as a result feel less like characters and more like actual people who are being terrorized by extraordinary creatures.

Jay Ferguson handles the musical duties this time around, and over-all his work is pretty good. It's definitely heads and shoulders above Kevin Kiner's generic and wholly disappointing work on Tremors 3, and the leitmotifs that appear throughout the film are much more memorable than the ones used in Tremors 2. In fact, the film's opening theme is probably one of my favorite compositions in a long time. It is rendered with samples rather than an honest to goodness orchestra, but despite the limitations of its synthetic orchestration, it does manage -- thanks in no small part to some well placed acoustic and electric guitars -- to feel big and boisterous and exciting. I usually sit through the ending credits just to listen to the film's main theme.
In terms of carnage, there's not much to speak of here that doesn't involve the creatures. There are one or two bits of human gore, and there's a really brilliant (creature gore) moneyshot right at the end, but again it's mostly creature gore rather than human carnage. When people get slurped, it tends to be a pretty dry affair. The film is also completely devoid of nudity, so look elsewhere if your objective is tantalization.

If there's never a Tremors 5 -- which seems likely given Universal's general disinterest in the future of the franchise -- then Tremors 4 is by far a much more satisfying "final chapter" than its predecessor.
If you're planning on picking up the Attack Pack Collection, you'll be getting Tremors 4 in any case. But if you're cautious of the fourth entry after seeing the third, or if you're the kind of person who prefers to pick these films up one at a time -- Buy It!



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Average members rating (out of 10) : 6.00 
Votes : 1 since 2008-03-18 22:57

Votes : 1 since 2008-03-18 22:57