Review of Critters (1986) by Filipeneto — 27 Nov 2021

If the movie "Gremlins" struck me as odd, yet fun, this film, released at about the same time, is much more surreal, as the script is based on the arrival of a plague in a rural Kansas village: furry, voracious, toothy, deadly aliens. I confess, I'm not a fan of alien movies. And seeing these flesh-eating fur balls is not strictly something I'd ever think to see again, even though I found the movie, overall, tolerable. It's a film where comedy and sci-fi go hand in hand and where suspense reigns... there are also some tense, though not scary, scenes.

The script is basically what I said: a group of furry and particularly voracious creatures flee the stellar authorities (something the film quickly forgets) and decide to come to our planet, where they begin to feed in a rural house, where the family that lives there quickly begins to fear for their lives. Simple, direct, functional, effective, with no major problems other than a few loose ends to explain or one or two sub-plots that were forgotten in the middle of everything else.

The cast does its job effectively and without major demerits. The film's family seems to us to be quite credible in their way of acting and relating, with a nice couple, two teenage children and normal fights between siblings. The youngest turns out to have a more evident role, and is very well played by Scott Grimes. Billy Green Bush and Dee Wallace are safe bets and give us solid work. Nadine Van Der Velde is equally effective.

On a technical level, the film bets a lot on creating an alien that can be funny and threatening at the same time... the result is not bad, and we almost managed to empathize with those devouring creatures. I don't know how they did it, but the creatures seem credible and authentic enough. The visual, special and sound effects used are equally good, most of the time: I just didn't like the excessive futurisms on the spaceship, because the effects used look very dated and cheap, even considering the film's age.