For a brief, shimmering moment, it almost looked as if the oft-maligned SyFy might finally have cast aside its long-held status as the home of subpar genre material, and had finally developed into a platform for genuinely well-made and entertaining films from creators who were really putting forth the requisite effort. The moment I’m talking about is the recent Leprechaun Returns, a semi-reboot of the 1990s video shop favourite franchise which, while to all intents and purposes being nothing more than your garden variety low-rent horror sequel, managed to surpass all expectations and proved an endearing and affectionate piece of work, which ticked all the right boxes for fans of the series whilst staying within the confines of its network TV homestead (i.e. minimal swearing and no nudity, although tons of extreme violence apparently isn’t a problem). After that minor success, who’s to say SyFy couldn’t have achieved something similar when dusting off another well-loved VHS era franchise, Critters?
Four Critters movies were made between 1986 and 1992, the series adhering to the law of diminishing returns at least in terms of quality. More recently Shudder hosted the TV series Critters: A New Binge, a show I can’t pass any comment on having not seen it, but either way it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow that two unrelated revivals of a long-dormant property would be made within the same year. And I can but hope A New Binge manages to capture the gleeful B-movie spirit of the originals (well, the first two at least), as Critters Attack! sure as hell doesn’t. It’s one of those frustrating sequels which may have its heart in the right place, but lacks the wit, invention or charisma on either side of the camera to even come close to achieving what it sets out to.
The action centres on Drea (Tashinia Washington), a recent high school graduate-turned-trainee sushi chef, who’s stuck in a rut after failing to get into the local college which had long been her dream destination, primarily because it was where her late mother went, and the daughter is in need of some closure given she blames herself for her mother’s untimely death in a car accident. (Is that enough inconsequential backstory for ya?) In a bid to improve her prospects of future admission, Drea accepts a job babysitting the Dean’s children, bringing along her own kid brother, a junior ufologist. Circumstances lead the ragtag bunch out into the wilderness, where they chance upon an unusual yet cute and cuddly looking creature which seems to be wounded; but of course, soon thereafter they find themselves under attack from some related, considerably less cute and cuddly little monsters from outer space, known by their true name – the Krites – by only one mysterious figure; a heavily armed senior citizen referred to only as Aunt Dee (Dee Wallace, returning to the franchise for the first time since the 1986 original).
Whether you’re a fan of the existing Critters movies or not, there’s precious little to love here. The script is bland and almost entirely without invention, the only real deviation from the exiting lore being the addition of a cute and benevolent Krite – which, of course, bears a great resemblance to Gizmo of Gremlins, and as such only serves to further underline how much Critters always owed to Joe Dante’s earlier little monster movie. As seems sadly inevitable, we spend way less time with the alien antagonists of the title than we do with the painfully uninteresting human protagonists, all of whom seem either bored or bewildered throughout; which incidentally includes the seasoned Dee Wallace, whose minor presence seems little more than an afterthought adding very little to proceedings and ultimately not making a great deal of sense, particularly as its unclear whether she’s meant to be reprising the character of Helen Brown under a different name, or if she’s meant to be following in the footsteps of the original’s alien bounty hunters.
It’s certainly nice to see modern films such as this which for the most part steer clear of CGI in favour of practical make-up and puppetry, although none of this is especially well-realised. Ultimately though, Critters Attack! would have needed FX work on a par with John Carpenter’s The Thing to stand a chance of distracting us from just how half-baked literally everything else is. Again, existing fans are unlikely to be satisfied, and I should hardly think any newcomers to the series will be left with any burning desire to explore the universe of the Krites any further. To wrap up with perhaps my three least favourite words with which to close a review: what a shame.
Critters Attack! is available now on DVD and Blu-ray from Warner Bros Home Entertainment.