Critters (1986)

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

We start in an asteroid prison, where the Krites hijack a spaceship and escape to Earth. The warden hires Ug (Terrence Mann) and another shapeshifting bounty hunter to follow them. As they study Earth transmissions, Ug takes the form of rock star Johnny Steele and the second remains blank. You will hear the song "Power of the Night" so many times in this movie that you'll be able to sing it yourself.Meanwhile, in Kansas, the Brown family is enjoying rural Earth life. There's father Jay (Billy "Green" Bush, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), mother Helen ( Dee Wallace Stone, The Howling, Cujo, Popcorn) and their kids April and Brad. As the kids go to school, Jay waits for mechanic Charlie (Don Keith Opper, who is in all four Critters films) to show up. Once a major league prospect, he started getting messages from radios and possibly even UFOs through his fillings and went insane.That night, the Krites ship crash lands. Thinking it's a meteorite, Jay and Brad check it out only to catch one of the monsters eating its way through a cow. They cut all the power to the farm, take out a cop and shoot Jay with one of their tranquilizing quills.While all this is going on, April is horizontally dancing with NYV transplant Steve (Billy Zane!) who gets eaten almost immediately. Her brother saves her with some firecrackers. Just then, the bounty hunters come to town, with one of them continually changing shape to become different townspeople.Everything works out well, with the Krites being wiped out. The bounty hunters even leave behind a device to call them in case of a sequel as we see eggs that are about to hatch.There's a funny scene with a Critter plays with an E.T. doll, a film in which Dee Wallace Stone also starred. And I almost forgot - genre vet Lin Shaye (the Insidious films) shows up too!Depending on when you grew up, Critters is either silly fluff or a treasured part of your childhood. I

This movie is very scary. It has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. 6 is a good rating. But this is such a great movie that 6 is underrating it. This is one of the best sciences fiction of all time. It is so scary. It is scarier then The Exorcist and that is not easy to do. It is about space monster. I like space monster stories. Stephen Herek is a great film maker and this is one of the his best movies. This is scarier the A Nightmare on elm street and that is not easy to do. This is scarier then Friday the 13th and that is not easy to do. It is not a 6. I give it 10 out 10. One the best movies I have seen. See it. It is a great movie.

I used to watch 'Critters' a lot in the eighties and loved it, so I thought I'd invest in the DVD box set containing all four films and take myself on a trip down memory lane. At first, the film started off well... despite the slightly outdated special effects showing the outer space penal colony where the titular aliens escape from, it's actually quite enjoyable. The alien prison guard is fun and the bounty hunters he send to capture the critters (or 'Crites' as they're technically known) are dry and menacing at the same time (for heroes anyway!).Anyway, the Critters land on – guess where – Earth and start terrorising the occupants of a farm in America. For a start I'd forgotten how little the actual Critters are in it. We don't really see them until about half way through and I know that people will claim that the lack of actually seeing them builds tension, I just wanted to get them on screen, as they're clearly the stars.Oh, yeah, the stars – it's unlikely you'll have heard of most of the actors, but you're probably not expecting to when comes to eighties horror B-movies (unless you've watched Star Trek: Voyager and know the alien crewmate 'Neelix' or seen – a normally older – Lin Shaye in other horror works). The Bounty Hunters are fun in a silly over-the-top kind of way, but their silence doesn't really open them up to carry the film when the monsters aren't stealing the show.The second half picks up, simply because we get to see the beasties more. Every scene the Critters are in is pretty good. Yes, it's a comedy horror and – in my opinion – the emphasis is truly on comedy. Critters isn't that horrific – I won't go into details as to how many people are killed, but it isn't that many. The Critters don't really get going as a murderous death squad, but they are still cool.The ending feels a little like an anti-climax, as if the writers didn't really have any idea of a fitting climax. The – very – end then feels like an afterthought of cheesy niceness which doesn't really go with the rest of the film's tone.Overall, Critters is still fun. I still liked it, but I think it was more suited to the 'boy-me' as opposed to the 'adult-me.' I'll probably watch it again at some stage, but now I'm left with a box set with three other Critters films to watch – all of which I loved growing up. Now I'm scared they won't live up to what I remember!

My son asked me sit through this truly awful film and I wish I hadn't. Acting, production values, script were so disturbing I had to shower after the film had finished to cleanse myself.This "B" movie garbage has been described by some as a cult classic. Some even have the audacity to describe this film as a comedy horror. Sadly for these mindless individuals the movie has nothing to recommend it self for. It astonishes me however that somehow almost all of the cast seemed to evaporate in to the ether after making this masterpiece.CRITTERS should have a government health warning on it and has to be avoided at all costs.Utter garbage.