“Burt Gummer is the gift that keeps giving,” Michael Gross remarks in a 30-minute Tremors documentary that was released on YouTube this month, and the long-running franchise has indeed proven those words to be true. Coming directly in the wake of the television series “Family Ties,” 1990’s Tremors cast Gross against type as the gun-toting, Graboid-slaying Burt Gummer, a side character who quickly became the franchise’s main character. That makes Tremors an unlikely franchise – the first film bombed at the box office, after all – led by an unlikely leading man, and Gross is back once more in his 73rd year and the franchise’s 30th year in this Halloween season’s brand new seventh installment, Tremors: Shrieker Island.

Once again directed by Don Michael Paul, who also helmed 2015’s Tremors 5: Bloodlines and 2018’s Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell, Shrieker Island takes us to a nature preserve in the Solomon Islands, where a group of trophy hunters have genetically engineered Graboids to create the ultimate hunting experience for wealthy clients. Naturally, once the Graboids and their Shrieker spawn escape containment, it’s up to you-know-who to save the day.

It’s a fun premise on paper, but you’d be forgiven for watching Tremors: Shrieker Island and swearing that you’ve already seen this movie before. While Michael Gross has always brought the goods as Burt Gummer, doing enough heavy lifting to keep the franchise afloat and make these direct-to-video sequels entertaining, the formula has by now worn quite thin, and there’s very little about Shrieker Island that does anything to inject new life into the proceedings. The movie briefly flirts with the idea of Burt being a bearded castaway, alone on an island and retired from Graboid hunting, but before you know it the beard’s off and he’s back to his usual self. And while we’ve never seen these monsters in an island setting before, this much is true, anyone expecting a little bit of aquatic horror from Shrieker Island will be disappointed to learn that the new environment ultimately doesn’t lend much personality to the proceedings.

For a franchise that’s always been happy to borrow from Jaws, it’s baffling that the opportunity to finally bring these movie monsters into the water is completely wasted here.

What’s “new” here is actually an old thing from the franchise’s past. True to the title, Tremors: Shrieker Island does indeed bring the nasty little Shriekers back to the franchise for the first time since Tremors 3, and it also introduces a new big bad in the form of a massive “Queen” Graboid cooked up in a lab like the Indominus Rex in Jurassic World. The two best sequences involve the Shriekers so they prove to be a good addition, faring much better than the Graboids themselves; we rarely even get to see the Godzilla-sized Graboid that’s lurking about, save for one inspired shot that sees the massive beast lit up by green fireworks. And to be expected at this point, all the monsters are brought to life digitally rather than practically. It’s not even that the visual effects are bad, per se, but they sure are a big time downgrade from the incredible practical effects that introduced us to these monsters back in the 1990s. This is a problem that continues to plague the franchise in its later installments, which feature vaguely realized Graboids that have completely lost the tangible charms of their predecessors.

Speaking of losing things, Tremors: Shrieker Island also loses Jamie Kennedy as Burt Gummer’s son Travis Welker, who fought Graboids alongside his dad in both of the previous sequels. Kennedy has instead been replaced by Jon Heder as new character Jimmy, a sort of surrogate son for Burt Gummer. I’m not exactly privy to the behind the scenes details here but it would seem to me that the script was likely written with Kennedy’s Travis originally in the role that became Heder’s Jimmy, as the new character is often treated like he’s Burt’s son. This creates a particular problem in the film’s final act, but to say any more than that would be to spoil some things. In any event, we’re told that Travis is locked up in prison during the events of this film for selling magic mushrooms, and that’s that. Moving right along!

The most notable new addition to the cast here is Richard Brake, who rose to prominence in the horror world thanks to his scene-stealing role in Rob Zombie’s 31. It’s Brake who plays the sleazy mastermind behind the pay-to-hunt-Graboids business venture, and really, who better to play a sleazy B-movie bad guy than Richard Brake? He’s pitch perfectly detestable as the most formidable human villain Burt has ever come up against, a far cry from the wholesome roster of characters we got to hang out with in the original Tremors. Other new arrivals include Jackie Cruz‘s Freddie, a sort of female Burt Gummer, Cassie Clare‘s badass arrow-slinging Anna, and Caroline Langrishe‘s Ja, the mother of Burt’s son Travis. They’re all stock characters, but this is after all the Burt Gummer Show at the end of the day.

Tremors: Shrieker Island is a film that tends to take itself a tad bit more seriously than the previous two outings, making for a less fun experience overall. Or maybe it’s just because we’ve seen it all before. On top of everything else the editing is often rough, with one scene constantly interrupting the flow and tension of another; there’s one particularly jarring moment in the film involving a bloody Graboid kill that we come into midway through the attack, as if a previous scene was axed entirely. Speaking of the kills, there’s not much of note here in that department, as it’s mostly a case of characters being dragged off by unseen threats. Monsters are slain and humans killed off, all of it feeling like a limp afterthought. If you blink you’ll miss it, and we’re onto the next scene. And most of the time you don’t even have to blink to miss it, because we’re told about cool things happening – swimming Graboids! an elephant kill! – but we’re never actually shown them. It’s all about cutting corners to mask the budgetary limitations, resulting in a film with no big moments or high points.

Burt Gummer is a great character that Michael Gross has clearly had a blast playing for the past 30 years, and it’s always a treat when a horror franchise keeps on trucking along and keeping its original continuity in mind. But with Shrieker Island in the rearview, it seems pretty clear at this point that there’s very little, if any, wind left in the sails of the Tremors franchise, at least in its current form. There’s clearly just not enough money at the disposal of the filmmakers to do anything more with the franchise than they’ve already done, and I’m not sure there’s much story left to be mined from the saga of Burt Gummer. If this film is the last hurrah, the best thing I can say is that it’s at least brought to a close on a touching note.

At this point, maybe it’s time for a bigger budget reboot. From the ground up.