YMMV / The Tommyknockers

• Catharsis Factor:
  • In the mini-series adaptation, there's Becca killing her husband, Joe. When you put together the fact that he has callously cheated on her numerous times, belittled/lied to/mistreated her, ditched the search for a lost child to have another affair and being an overall Jerkass, his death is INCREDIBLY satisfying.
  • There's also Nancy (who Joe was sleeping with) getting choked to death closer to the end of the film.
• Crazy Is Cool: The Tommyknockers and their affected Havenites initially play this straight, but then deconstruct it. Their abilities allow them to create crazy awesome things like flying tractors, typewriters that operate via telepathy, and a water heater powered by a small nuclear reactor-many of them by using mere D-cell batteries as the power source. However, the Tommyknockers' technological prowess is hindered by their psychosis (meaning that the "Crazy" part keeps them from being Awesome for long) and doesn't permit them to really use their abilities in the long run. The affected Havenites have a little better luck as they can devise efficient uses for this knowledge, but often overlook little details (such as the use of a DC converter) and succumb to the same psychotic bents.
• Crosses the Line Twice: While the scene itself is pretty unpleasant, there's just something stupidly amusing about how Gard screams "Arriba, arriba!" as he charges with an umbrella.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Intrepid Reporter Johnny Leandro, for being a somewhat humorous and eager character but also doing a very thorough job investigating what's going on and brilliantly averting a Have You Told Anyone Else? scenario by telling another colleague everything he's figured out before heading into danger.
  • Ruth, for resisting the changes and earning her description as the heart and soul of the town.
  • Tommy and Hester, the two kids sent on a mission outside of town limits (where they may have seen Pennywise) which requires some Villainous Valor given the injuries it threatens, which do in fact happen.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: As bad as the aliens are; they are not as hateable as Joe from the miniseries, who not only cheats on his wife Becka and belittles her daily, but he throws away her lunch that she made for him, laughs evilly after making her feel bad for herself and abandons a search for a lost kid to have an affair with Nancy.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • For Gardener, the Tommyknockers cross it, when he finds out what's in Bobbi's shed. They keep people locked up in shower cabinets filled with some green liquid, attach cables to their brains, and suck the energy out of them; a long, incredibly painful process. He's especially freaked out to discover Bobbi's dog also hooked up.
  • In the miniseries, Becka's cheating husband has one after several earlier petty Kick the Dog moments: he leaves early from a search for a missing child to go sleep with his mistress since he knows that the search will keep his cop wife occupied. Read that again. He abandons a missing child to go cheat on his wife.
• Narm: The scene in the vet's office in the miniseries, where all of the pets start going ballistic all at once in the presence of something sinister in the air. It would've been alright in itself if it stuck to normal, everyday pets like dogs and birds, but among the pets in the waiting room are a cobra, an owl, and a Komodo dragon, making the scene instead come off as excessively silly.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The various effects on the Havenites as a result of the Tommyknockers' presence are quite unnerving. Various people find themselves bleeding uncontrollably, everyone loses their teeth, and, in the case of a few, their skin becomes transparent and they have tentacles where their genitals should be. Such things also count as examples of Nausea Fuel and Squick, respectively.
  • The violent acts the Havenites commit towards one another and others are also pretty unnerving. Such as one's giddy murder of two investigating policemen by obliterating them with a green light from his makeshift bazooka, and how another casually forces a poker buddy to partially disintegrate himself before he sends him to Altair-IV to die, all over cheating him for pennies in past games.
  • The horrific fate of those trapped in the shed behind Bobbi's house, including her poor dog.
  • Gard's theory that the ship has been traveling and accidentally destroying planets then creating new crew multiple times before.
  • Pennywise's cameo.
• Rooting for the Empire: In the miniseries, it's hard not to sympathize with Becka when she rigs her television to murder her husband Joe. Not only does she feel extremely reluctant to do so, but Joe proves himself to be an absolute piece of shit who seems to take sick pleasure in treating Becka like garbage as he cheats on her with Nancy. The fact that she ends up in a mental hospital after seeing Joe die might've been the kindest thing to happen to her, as it at least means she didn't fall in with the rest of the Havenites and get really bad.

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