Burt Gummer has had a long history with the Graboids as they’re called, longer than even he seems to realize since in the course of six movies his great-grandfather even ran across them, but somehow failed to mention it. It’s with a shake of the head and a definite groan of irritation that I state that this movie could have been a lot more than the schlock it’s become, but the first one was at least tolerable and pretty funny. It’s not Michael Gross, he’s actually a pretty good actor, but the idea of the Graboids evolving in such a quick and deadly fashion defies more than what’s necessary for evolution to occur, it just begs the question of why they’ve never been seen in greater numbers since they haven’t been actively hunted up until the second movie and beyond, and there don’t seem to be a lot of animals on the earth that could have taken a Graboid on their own and come out victorious. Kevin Burwick from MovieWeb still seems to be optimistic since Gross has stated that the script is to his liking and apparently isn’t a return to the material that’s been going on for five movies now. I don’t say six because I actually liked the first one, and the second wasn’t too horrible really, so maybe it’s been ridiculous for four movies instead.
Be honest now, having names like Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, and Reba McEntire along with Michael Gross in the first movie made a big difference. They were all skilled in acting, and the rest of the cast was even great, but the four characters that really made it pop were Val, Earl, Burt, and Heather. Even Walter was great in his part, but this was the core group that really made the first movie into the cult classic it became. There was just something really appealing about two handymen and a survivalist couple that lived in the desert taking on gigantic, worm-like creatures that hunted by sensing vibrations and could take an entire station wagon down in seconds that was a lot of fun. Looking at the movies now it’s easy to say that they’re ridiculous and the special effects budget on the first one must not have been all that great. But for what they had to work with it was awesome since it gave the audience an idea of just how massive the things were and how insanely dangerous. For crying out loud they dug around the foundations of the buildings in Perfection and were about to knock the entire town out from under the survivors, there aren’t a lot of movie monsters that can make that claim with only three of them present. Yes, Kong and Godzilla could flatten Perfection with a stomp, but you know what I mean.
The fact that there’s a part seven is enough to hope that this will be it finally since it does seem to be stretching all plausibility when it comes to this franchise, and to be honest there wasn’t much of that to begin with. One of the biggest problems of all time has been the idea of discovery since despite the fact that there are new species that are being found on this planet now and again, none of them have been so massive as the Graboids and to think that something so big with such an obviously big appetite could go unnoticed after millions of years is kind of hard to swallow. If that point has been made in the last several movies it’s obviously been glossed over since the evolution of the creatures has been one of the biggest talking points, meaning that their origin has been kind of looked at and then put aside in favor of the action and their continued variations that seemingly just pop up now and again. Burt is about the only person left from the original movies, or actually he is the only person that’s kept coming back, since Kevin Bacon did a one and done kind of deal while Fred Ward came back for the second movie and was gone right after. You’ve got to figure that Val and Earl had had their fill of Perfection since in the first movie they were trying to get out in the first place and might have if not for the Graboids leaving a trail of bodies along the way that they just happened to notice. But once each one of them had a love interest they were gone in the next movie, and that left the rest of the town, which was basically Mindy, Nancy, Miguel, and Burt, and Melvin, who continued to be the kind of character you’d love to see get eaten.
There’s nothing else to say but that it’s coming, and now it’s just a matter of waiting to see if it’s any good.
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