Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) review

Publication Date: 10-31-2025

Dir. S. S. Wilson

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

The relationship Tremors 4: The Legend Begins and I have has long been a strange one, stranger than the original Tremors film going from a modestly successful, contemporary B-movie into a series that spanned three decades, a TV show, and an online video game. Tremors 4: The Legend Begins was never the sequel I craved to watch as a young child, totally invested in the universe of Perfection, Nevada and the biology of the Graboid. I always craved the first two films and watched the third film on special occasions, yet I was never drawn to the idea of a prequel to the franchise set all the way back in the 1880’s. One faithful day when I was about nine, I settled into watch the film and shut it off after about forty minutes; the action wasn’t there, the suspense was missing, the faithful characters I grew attached to over the course of the years weren’t even a twinkle in the eyes of the characters, and, bottom line, the atmosphere felt all wrong. I put the film away and decided I’d never watch it again.

About six years later, I tried once again, made it to the end credits, and generally liked what I had seen; it was a film I found pleasant enough, somewhat entertaining, but again, never really wanted to see again nor craved every year like the previous three films. Watching it for the third time, making it to the end credits of the second time, I’m caught between my downright hatred from my first “viewing” and the acceptance of my second to reach a point of indifference. Tremors 4 is a mediocre addition to a franchise that otherwise boldly worked with the elements of suspense and constructing biology of obscure, constantly developing creatures and an assembly of quirky but, for the most part, instantly lovable characters.

Tremors 4 lacks that smoothness that made the first three films so investing, and doesn’t really know how to assemble or make use of its time period without it seeming like a costume party. The film follows the town of Perfection, Nevada in 1889, when it is known as Rejection, Nevada. The town is a largely desolate, unremarkable town that is financially elevated by the silver mine, which soon becomes a dangerous location when numerous miners are reported dead or killed on the job in a mysterious fashion. To investigate, the mine’s owner Hiram Gummer (Michael Gross), great-grandfather of the Tremors‘ franchise’s Burt Gummer, a cold and mannered businessman concerned about his bottom dollar above all, arrives in Rejection.

Hiram immediately gets acquainted to the townsfolk, to whom he is incredibly standoffish, before getting a look at the “dirt dragons” themselves. Before transforming into the typical subterranean beast we know them as, the worms are smaller, more land-oriented creatures, about the length of a skateboard, with spikes along their sides and a smaller head that resembles their Graboid successor. Hiram, Juan (Brent Roam), a mineworker, and Pyong Lien Chang (Ming Lo), current owner and operator of Chang’s General Store, realize they’re ill-equipped to combat the violent beasts, they enlist in the help of a skilled sharpshooter. The sharpshooter presents himself to Rejection as “Black Hand Kelly” (Billy Drago), an ominous figure cloaked in black and blessed with a quick trigger finger.

Tremors 3: Back to Perfection was the point in the franchise when one could really see that the budgets for the films had become increasingly minimized and the fate of the series headed in the direction of Sci-Fi Network TV movies. Tremors 4 further reduces the budget to a real pitiful muddle of poorly conceived CGI and limited human interaction with the creatures. The combat and suspense elements included in the preceding films are notably missing from this one, sacrificed in favor of listless conversation between the characters that doesn’t eloquently build character nor create any additional interest in the situation.

Finally, there’s the overall lack of spirit from the original three films. Those were movies that built off of one another, adding characters related to one another, providing epilogues to those who weren’t in future installments, and linked together like an elaborate food chain. Tremors 4, aside from the connection to Burt Gummer and Walter Chang’s market, largely feels divorced from the series all together, and although S.S. Wilson, Brent Maddock, and Nancy Roberts are all still a part of this film, a lot of the zest and the attributes that made the preceding films so watchable and easily lovable feels so subtracted that this might as well be a prequel made by total strangers of the series.

NOTE: Take a listen to my interview with Michael Gross, where we talk all things Tremors, how and why Universal revived the series in 2015, and why rights issues makes the future of the franchise murky: