ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Michael Durivage is a Michigan author and lifelong machinist with more than twenty-five years in precision manufacturing. His books include the supernatural horror novel The Crossing and the comic apocalypse novel Is the Apocalypse a Valid Use of Sick Days? Explore his books at https://www.paulmichaeldurivage.com/books
Spoiler warning: This essay discusses the plot and ending of Tremors (1990).
At the beginning of Tremors, Val and Earl have had enough of Perfection, Nevada. They do the jobs nobody else wants, get filthy doing them, and see very little reason to stay. The town needs their labor. That doesn’t mean the town feels like a future.
Then something starts eating people from underneath it, and all that familiarity changes value. Knowing the neighbors means knowing who has equipment, who can drive it, and whose terrible personality you might have to tolerate while asking for help. Perfection is a lousy place to make a living. It turns out to have a surprisingly good emergency crew.
That is one of the great pleasures of Ron Underwood’s 1990 film. Its people are useful in particular ways. Val and Earl, played by Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, aren’t waiting for a crisis to reveal secret military training. They are handymen. The film trusts that working with things has already taught them something worth knowing.
I have spent more than twenty-five years in precision manufacturing. Watching people solve a problem is a large part of the appeal here: someone notices a condition, somebody argues about it, and the next attempt has to account for what just went wrong. A confident explanation is only useful until the equipment—or the ground—disagrees with it.
The graboids make that process unusually visible. Because they travel underground and track vibration, familiar objects acquire alarming new functions. A floor can become an entrance. A noisy appliance can advertise your location. The landscape still looks like the place everybody knows, but the rules for moving through it have changed. The characters have to learn those rules while standing on things the monsters are trying to knock over.
The film lets us do some of that thinking with them. We can see the distance between a roof and a vehicle, or imagine the small disaster of a foot landing on dirt. A solution is satisfying because we understand the obstacle it solves. When the obstacle changes, a previously clever person is allowed to be frightened and wrong.
Rhonda, the seismology student played by Finn Carter, matters enormously to that rhythm. Her readings help establish what is out there, but her contribution doesn’t end with delivering scientific information. Trapped with Val and Earl on the rocks, she recognizes a way to cross the gaps by pole-vaulting. It is a wonderfully physical answer to a problem that has become exhausting just to watch.
The sequence also adjusts who gets heard. Val and Earl are comfortable talking and deciding together; Rhonda has to make room for her idea inside that established partnership. Once they try it, the idea’s value is obvious. The town needs the newcomer as much as the people who have been there for years.
Burt and Heather Gummer supply a different pleasure. Michael Gross and Reba McEntire play people whose preparations have finally encountered an emergency large enough to justify the basement. When a graboid breaks in, they have the firepower and the nerve to fight back. The scene is funny because the creature has made an exceptionally bad choice of household.
But the film keeps their usefulness in proportion. Killing a monster in the basement doesn’t make the journey across the valley safe. Their supplies need to become part of a larger plan, and their neighbors still have knowledge and abilities they need. Even this heavily armed household cannot settle the entire problem from home.
The escape in the loader and trailer makes cooperation tangible. It is easy to say that an ensemble works together. Tremors gives that claim weight, wheels, and a place for people to sit. Someone must reach the machine. Other people must distract the creatures. Then the group has to get aboard. We can follow the dependencies without a speech explaining them.
That is where knowing one another becomes more useful than simply liking one another. Val and Earl can argue over who should take the risk because each understands what the other can do. They are irritating to each other, but their familiarity includes an accurate sense of the other’s abilities. The argument carries affection without needing to announce it.
Perfection’s losses prevent this from becoming a cheerful demonstration that everybody will be fine if they just pitch in. Walter Chang, the storekeeper played by Victor Wong, dies. The store is a gathering point and a source of supplies, yet it cannot protect him. A community can contain useful people and still lose them. The deaths give the later improvisation urgency; ingenuity isn’t a guarantee the movie quietly hands its favorites.
The creatures also keep learning. Once the loader encounters their trap, having assembled the right equipment is no longer enough. The group must think again. The graboids’ intelligence keeps the human cooperation from feeling like a puzzle with one correct answer waiting to be found.
By the ending, even the last bomb has a use beyond the obvious explosion. Val uses the final bomb’s blast to send the creature charging toward the cliff. The finish draws on behavior the film has taught us to recognize. It feels earned because we have watched these people collect, test, and revise what they know.
Tremors never has to make Perfection an ideal town. Val and Earl have good reasons to want out, and surviving a monster attack doesn’t turn septic work into a dream career. What changes is our appreciation of the people stuck there with them. The neighbors already knew how to fix things, handle equipment, make observations, and get on one another’s nerves. Under pressure, those ordinary relationships become something they can use to keep each other alive.
