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Tremors: Shrieker Island, is the seventh film in the Tremors series, released on Direct to Video on October 20, 2020. Production began in November 2019, with filming taking place in Thailand. It once again stars Michael Gross as Burt Gummer, along with Jon Heder, Jackie Cruz, and Richard Brake.

A billionaire biochemical mogul genetically augments a quartet of Graboid eggs and hatches them on his private island, intending to arrange a big game hunt of the most dangerous predators on the planet alongside several other wealthy Wall Street and Silicon Valley types. When his employees working at the island's wildlife research preserve discover his plans, they immediately contact Burt Gummer for help, as it's pretty obvious things are going to go very wrong very quickly. Leading the wildlife preserve employees is Jasmine, Burt's old flame from the 60's and Travis Welker's mother. Another employee, an unsure and clumsy gofer named Jimmy, ends up finding himself Burt's sidekick, due to Travis currently serving a stint in a Mexican jail.


It contains examples of the following tropes:

  • 10-Minute Retirement: When Jimmy finds him, Burt is on a small, remote Polynesian island living naked in a hut. Apparently the State wanted him to apply for a permit to add a sewer line to his house, and not wanting to put himself on the government's radar, he got fed up with the bureaucracy and decided he was outta there.
  • All Your Powers Combined: The new genetically-enhanced graboids seem to be a combination of every Graboid seen in the series so far, with their abilities taken up to eleven. They have the brainpower and Shrieker phase of the American Graboids, the sheer strength and durability of the African ones, and (possibly) the swimming ability of the Arctic ones.
  • Ascended Meme: "Burt Gummer Day", a meme on various forums for several years, is established here as a legitimate holiday in-universe taking place on April 14th.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Graboid Queen is gigantic to the point of dwarfing a normal Graboid and being able to swallow a 10,000 pound elephant.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Bill serves as the primary antagonist, having created the new Graboid outbreak and proving an insane threat to the cast. However, midway through the film, the Graboid Queen appears to serve as the monster antagonist.
  • Bittersweet Ending: At first sweet but quickly bitter. The last Graboid is killed and the island and all the people living there are saved...But Burt died to make sure it did die. After the smoke clears, everyone makes a grave for him. The credits are of him and his ancestor Hiram doing what they do best: Killing Graboids.
  • Call-Back: Burt takes out the last Graboid by tricking it into blundering over a cliff - the same trick Val came up with way back at the end of the first movie to take down "Stumpy", the last Graboid there. Only this time, the Graboid is so big they have to use explosives too, and Burt isn't as lucky as Val...
  • Chainsaw Good: Jimmy uses a chainsaw to fight two of the Shriekers.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Well, deuteragonist. Travis was a snarky, stubborn, almost cocky man who frequently butted heads with Burt. Jimmy is a slightly awkward, insecure gofer who feels completely out of his depth dealing with the Graboids (and even his coworkers), and generally defers to Burt in decision-making.
  • Death World: It's set on a private island in the Pacific where genetically enhanced graboids are bred for the purposes of big game hunting. To put that into perspective: this place is more dangerous than Isla Sorna. Then they escape to the neighboring islands...
  • Defiant to the End: Burt sacrifices himself to ensure the Graboid Queen dies, but goes out giving it the finger.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: Bill is eaten by the Graboid Queen at the beginning of the third act, who promptly takes over as the main antagonist.
  • Egomaniac Hunter: Bill breeds and hatches a quartet of genetically enhanced Graboids for a big game hunter. Though the plan is to charge a bunch of Wall Street and Silicon Valley moguls for the privilege of hunting the Graboids, as the hunt quickly goes out of control Bill becomes increasingly unhinged and obsessed with finishing the hunt.
  • Face Death with Dignity: Burt is decidedly not afraid as he dies, instead turning and facing the monster directly so he can give it the finger.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Bill again. He's invariably cordial and polite to everyone, though he never changes his mind about finishing the hunt. As things go increasingly out of control, he puts a tranq dart in Burt's leg, and dumps the protagonists in a bomb shelter, and his only reaction to his top scientist being killed is to remark what a hunt this will be.
  • Gatling Good: The dude with the minigun is the only hunter who manages to take out any of the Shriekers, managing to shred one or two of them before being disabled by their sonic screams.
  • Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Bill wanted to hunt Graboids and their spawn, but decided the regular ones weren't dangerous enough, so he decided to tamper with their genome to make them even deadlier.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Bill wanted to create a powerful predator to hunt. He succeeded, creating one of the most dangerous, powerful creatures in the franchise in the form of the Graboid Queen.
  • The Hero Dies: Burt gets swallowed by the Graboid Queen in the process of luring it into a giant explosive trap, his last act being to shove Jimmy out of the way of the Queen and then give the Queen a big middle finger before it swallows him and the two of them are blown to pieces. Somewhat foreshadowed by the frequent talk in the film about how Burt has established a legacy as a living legend. He ended up dying doing what he loved.
  • High-Heel–Face Turn: Anna, Bill's top hunter, drops everything and decides to help the heroes when too many people die, and it becomes impossible to ignore that Bill's gone off the deep end.
  • The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Bill's group of hunters intend to hunt down the graboids and shriekers on the dark island, but inevitably start being hunted themselves.
  • Hypocrite: Bill acts like Burt is insane to counter the praise of one of his subordinates...when he's an insane Egomaniac Hunter who decided to genetically engineer Graboids to be more deadly.
  • It Can Think:
    • The new Graboids demonstrate a bit more intelligence than they did in the previous 2 films; one of them seems to be capable to recognizing the dude with the minigun as the greatest threat and takes him out first, and the Queen Graboid actually seems to know who Burt is, saving him for last, attacking him while ignoring all other targets when she finally goes after him, and (most bizarrely) seemingly even giving him time to say his goodbyes to his family before their final fight.
    • The Shriekers - which were already shown to be quick learners - are smart enough to hold back from immediately attacking the hunting party, use ambush tactics, actually talk to each other, and take a member of the hunting party out so quickly and efficiently that the others don't even notice he's gone at first.
  • Kill It with Fire: As the wildlife preserve doesn't have any guns, Burt ends up using a flamethrower (from an old World War 2 bunker near their camp) for most of the film.
  • Large and in Charge: The Queen Graboid is huge even compared to regular Graboids; it's noted to have swallowed a 10,000 pound bull elephant (something even Burt finds hard to believe), and also somehow managed to cross from one island to another, despite Graboids normally being unable to swim.
  • Lethally Stupid: Bill created genetically engineered, more powerful Graboids to hunt by just letting them loose on his island and taking a bunch of rich people who threw money at him to hunt them. Burt and Jasmine both rightly point out this was a complete idiotic idea, especially when Burt points out Bill didn't even bother to do enough research to know how Graboids work, the specifics of the genetic modifications and that his guns are nowhere near the caliber required for the task. Predictably, this gets a lot of people including Bill himself killed.
  • Machete Mayhem: Burt fights a Shrieker one-on-one with a pair of machetes, and actually manages to win fairly handily.
  • Make Me Wanna Shout: The new Shriekers use their "bioacoustic" scream as a weapon, dropping humans to their knees with extreme pain.
  • No Kill like Overkill: The Graboid Queen is sent plummeting off a cliff, onto a bed of spikes, and blown up in a huge explosion.
  • Put on a Bus: Travis Welker is absent, with his mother Jasmine mentioning that he's currently in a Mexican prison for smuggling magic mushrooms across the Mexican border.
  • Shout-Out: The Shrieker's POV is shown with clear thermal vision identical to that seen in Predator, complete with some of the original sound effects. The hunting party also includes a man with a backpack-mounted minigun and that's before factoring in all the times the characters (namely Jimmy) name-drop the movie outright.
  • Skull for a Head: The new Shriekers have armored heads that greatly resemble dog skulls.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence: Bill is absolutely sure his hunting party can kill the Graboids...but doesn't even seem aware of the fact Graboids don't remain Graboids and Burt, correctly, warns him that he's not carrying anywhere close to strong enough weaponry to kill them effectively.
  • This Is Reality: Burt gets annoyed when Jimmy compares the Shrieker's thermal vision to the Predator.
    Burt: This is real life, son! Not some hollywood fairytale!

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