I really like it when I revisit a movie that I have not seen in some time and it turns out to be actually good. Not just nostalgic good, but genuinely good. Such is the case with Critters. It was not the cheese ball horror flick I apparently erroneously remembered.
We start off in space where a group of prisoners called Krites are being transported to a prison asteroid. Something goes awry and the Krites steal a ship and escape. Two space bounty hunters are commissioned to find them. The Krites land in rural Kansas and the bounty hunters follow them there. We meet the Browns, your typical family with Dad Jay, Mom Helen, and brother and sister Brad and April. Brad and April get on each others nerves as brothers and sisters usually do, and Brad tends to misbehave a bit. April is a hormone engulfed teen who just wants to bang her boyfriend Steve (a young Billy Zane) in the hay. This invasion of Krites serves as the event that will remind them of how important it is to love each other, and be nice. Aw.
This movie is actually quite well done. There are a lot of things that I really liked about it. Right off, I liked the choice to have Mom, Dad and Brad all meet the Krites at the same time, rather than Brad, the mischievous young boy see them and then have to spend 45 minutes of the movie convincing his parents that they are real. Also, once they do meet them, that’s it. The pace is pretty steady the rest of the film. There isn’t a lot of choppiness and unimportant plot development.
Rather, we see the Krites and the Browns, then we see the bounty hunters trying to track them. The time we spend in each is just long enough; the switch does not get repetitious and yet does not leave you needing to see more of either. In fact, the running time of this film is damn near perfect at 82 minutes. We get in to the action fairly early, so it is a quality 82 minutes.
Also, the acting is decent. Part of a lot of 80’s horror film charm is the lackluster acting, but I submit that good acting is just as effective. Dee Wallace, 80’s staple, plays Mom. Scott Grimes, who spent 6 years on E.R. was Brad. Lin Shaye, whom I assume is in some sort of love tryst with Bobby and Peter Farrelly, having appeared in a bunch of their films, is even good as Sally. I also enjoyed that humor was not over used in the film. The tendency to fill a horror movie (and really, horror is used loosely to categorize this film) script with dumb jokes was rampant back in the 80’s. The humor in this was understated and actually clever at times. One of the Krites finds and plays with an E.T. doll, then eats it (Dee Wallace was in E.T. ). Also, I found it hysterical that the Sheriff, a very often used character in these type of films, was absolutely useless and did nothing to help anyone. Not that he was unwilling, he was just inept.
I did have to nitpick a bit and find some things that I felt were odd. For example, the Krites did not speak English and we saw subtitles when they would speak (except when one of them said “Uh oh,” which I guess is spoken the same in any language in the universe). However, the bounty hunters spoke English (even before they got to Earth). Also, the bounty hunters could take the form of any human that they saw. One of them picked Johnny Steele, a popular singer, which in my opinion would be a bad choice for trying to blend in. This may however not have been the intent as they spent their time on Earth in their space clothes and the other bounty hunter would change in to someone that was well known in the town (a cop, the Reverend, the drunk Charlie). Also, the very end was a bit if a stretch. However, these really detracted very little from the overall experience. I was quite pleased in revisiting this film. It is not a typical horror movie that will scare you by any means, but it does not cheapen itself by trying to make it a goofy comedy with elements of horror. It takes itself just seriously enough to be believable. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. Definitely a great little film.
So why is the movie called Critters, and not Krites? As Brad is talking to the bounty hunters (who as far as he knows at that point are Johnny Steele and Charlie) he refers to the Krites as critters. The bounty hunters ask where the Krites are. Brad does not understand, so they use his own term and call them critters.
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