Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell (2018) Review

"I'll be dead when I say I'm dead!"

-Bert Gummer

The 6th film in the Tremors series once again follows paranoid, right-wing, gun-nut Bert Gummer (Michael Gross), who is faced with losing everything he owns to the IRS.  After being contacted by a team of scientists in the arctic circle who are facing an attack from graboids, Bert's son, Travis (Jamie Kennedy) convinces him to go help out in order to bring some interest back to Bert's failing brand.  Bert, Travis, and a team of scientists, which includes Valerie McKee (Jamie-Lee Money), the daughter of the Val McKee (Kevin Bacon), the hero from the original film, are forced to team up to fight off the graboids and the ass-blasters of they ever want to make it out of Canada.

What Works:

Bert Gummer is one of my all time favorite movie characters.  Michael Gross is consistently great in all of the Tremors movies and that holds true here.  Every time he is on screen, he steals the show.

Jamie Kennedy can be a pretty hit-or-miss kinda actor.  He's great in some stuff, terrible in others.  And while he has a few too many corny jokes, he's once again, solid.

My biggest compliment is to the film's second half, which is just all of the remaining characters trapped at their base and trying to find a way to kill the graboids.  It feels a lot like the original movie, when all of the characters were trapped in town and forced to climb on the roofs.  The second half of this movie felt a lot like the original, and there were a few really fun sequences.

Finally, a major plot point is that Bert is dying due to an a parasite he picked up when he was swallowed by a grabbed in the third movie.  I like the tie-ins to the earlier films, as most horror sequels tend to ignore previous sequels.  It was a nice touch.

What Sucks:

I really didn't enjoy most of the first half of the movie.  There was moments where I thought the movie was going to get really good, but they didn't have the budget to follow through.  For example, the opening scene takes place in the frozen tundra (which was actually filmed in the desert, but later it was edited to make the sand look white as snow).  A group of scientists are attacked by snow graboids and it's pretty cool, but we never go back to the snow.  The rest of the movie takes place in a wooded, mountainous area, because global warming melted the snow and freed the graboids.  In actuality, it's because they filmed in South Africa.  It's disappointing that they didn't do more with their premise.

Also, early on, Bert and Travis are in a small airplane that gets attacked by an ass-blaster.  We've never had an airborne scene like this in a Tremors movie.  It was a great idea, but it was over almost immediately.

The film feels really cheep.  The CGI is much worse than that in the 5th movie and the scene where they have to emergency land a plane feels extremely phony.

Finally, most of the characters are thin.  They are either boring or annoying.  And there are some really oddly placed gay jokes.  We've never had gay jokes in this series before, why are we starting in 2018?

Verdict:

Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell is the worst film in the series, but it's not outright bad.  There are some fun sequences, the second half of the movie is very similar to the original movie, and Michael Gross is amazing as always.  It has a ton of flaws and could use more practical effects instead of all this CGI, but it was fun watch, and I think fans of the Tremors series will enjoy it.

 6/10: Ok