Critters Attack! (2019 TV Movie) User Reviews

Aliens are real

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 24 July 2019]

A babysitter (Tashiana Washington) fights the Crites to protect the children. The group befriends one of the Critters who helps them at the fictional Leroy University. Dee Wallace, who was in the original 1986 film as Helen Brown returns as Aunt Dee, Critter bounty hunter.

The film is said to be a reboot with Dee Wallace playing a different character, although she was aware of the aliens and was monitoring their movement which would indicate they have been here before. The license plates were generic black on white. Dee Wallace's plate was CWP 319 i.e. Concealed Weapons Permit. 319 adds up to 13 something that is better for a supernatural film. The other vehicle's plate was 652 EWP. Again 13. What EWP means, I don't know.

The film is rated "R" because? It does use the word D-Head and it teases us with a man taking a shower. I didn't think the violence was up to "R" levels. The target audience is clearly PG-13 or less.

Guide: No f-word, no sex, no nudity. Rated "R" for some blood and people being eaten.

Half a movie

[vedelminashigo · 3/10 · 26 July 2019]

Critters is easy, they show up and eat some people then get blown up. No problem. Now there are continuity issues like the big reveal of the big bounty hunter should have been a huge deal but I had to read who she even was let alone she was in the first movie. Why IS there a female crite if they all lay eggs, it happens in THIS movie. Why are they attracted to her and why is she against her own kind? How is Helen aware of WHO the 'Queen' is but nothing about her motives? Why WAS the slashed Crite just watching them? Those needles are almost instant but had zero effect on two kids. Lke a LOT is tossed onto the plate to the point it doesn't make sense and no it really didn't come across as sequel baiting.....because the movie just ends. No quips, no eggs tucked away or one last critter they missed. None of that. The movie just decided it is done and characters and new ideas whatever the movie is over roll credits. This is like the rough FIRST draft of a script yet it made it to sale WITH A GUEST STAR from the first movie! That should be on the cover, I should have been hyped up for that. Missed opportunity.

Well that's typical for today's films.

[midnightcub · 4/10 · 2 August 2019]

Not only are the characters obnoxious. Not only does most of the story not make sense. Not only do characters say and do the stupidest things. But worst of all they CHANGED things from the original 4. I hate when they change things from the standard they created. It was great seeing Dee Wallace and the teethy fur balls. But even if you're a fan, this is only, and just barely, worth one watch.

Well that wasn't very good

[mikedegroot · 2/10 · 14 July 2019]

Critters has always been a cheesy hor/com franchise, but this iteration is just bad. It honestly feels more like a made for Nickelodeon special than an actual movie.

The "plot" is nonsensical and all over the place. I mean who finds a basketball shaped furball in the forest, whose mouth takes up half it's head and just says 'This must be some sort of wild animal who needs our help' and takes it home with them? While the ending of the movie is about as anticlimactic as it gets.

The acting and dialogue are amateurish at best and the "jokes" are seriously cringe-worthy. The effects are very poorly done and it's clear that that the critters are just hand puppets. Everything about it is half-assed and that's putting it nicely.

I'm a fan of cheesy horror movies and the original Critters films from the 80's, but there is seriously no way to look past the many flaws of this one and find any real enjoyment in it at all. The worst thing about it is that it's boring and that's the last thing a Critters movie should be. I'm giving it a generous 2/10.

If you loved the old Critter movies then dont watch this one

[heavensdead · 1/10 · 26 July 2019]

Imo This movie is just a Cash grab.

The acting is horrible, and the scenes are not well put together. they also come with the wacky's weakness to the Critters that kills the mood to watch the rest.

Are you a Critter fan and loved the old movies then do not watch this movie. Its cheap and bad.

Really?!?

[Riot9172 · 1/10 · 24 July 2019]

If a piece of crap could take a crap, it would be this movie. Completely destroyed the reputation of the original. On top of all of that, these idiots break every rule of the tradition horror movie genre and if pisses me off.

Better than A New Binge - barely

[Cactus-5 · 2/10 · 13 July 2019]

Begins somewhat interesting with that cheesy 80s monster movie feel, but quickly descends through mediocrity to downright dull. While better than the tripe that was A New Binge on a filmmaking level, storywise I'm not so sure. And why is this rated R? It's not scary or gory, and unfortunately not funny either. Give it a pass.

NOTHING to like, apart from the practical effects.

[craiglgarnerjones · 1/10 · 23 July 2019]

SEEN IT! Puppets and practical effects are the ONLY good thing in this move. Acting, camera work, colour grading, story, script; it was all bad!

Nothing captured what I loved about the first couple of films. No explanation as to Aunt D being there or where her family was; she has 10 minutes of screen time if that, low budget obviously not enough to pay her more. No bounty hunters.

The worst thing was the story and characters... if you're trying to imitate Stranger Things, at least do it, instead of half-assing it with bad child actors; they didn't even look terrified when an army of Crites where coming for them.

Such a shame, a missed opportunity. There are still only 4 Critters movies to me.

Please pass this feedback onto the Writer and Director, because even I can write a better script than this, with my 8 years worth of short film writing experience.

There was no story. It was like a joke of the franchise, a mix between Aliens (A Queen Crite... just no, they had no Queen in the first movie, and why did she kill them, no explanation, not like I even cared due to the bad story), a Crite who landed in an escape pod, but with no explanation of where it came from, or why it was scarred across the eye. Child character we cannot get invested in, nor care about. There is not much to this at all, it looks like it was written and shot over a weekend with permission to use the original Critter puppets, and yeah, I noticed you reused a lot of the older ones for this film, even the bald one from part 3, and the grey haired one.

I will NOT be purchasing this for the collection, I choose to ignore its existence, it's not worthy.

Bad Bad Bad !!!!

[big_pete_5 · 1/10 · 21 July 2019]

Terrible storyline. Terrible acting. Terrible deaths. Just terrible. The Critters are hand puppets and the effects are poorly done. Looks like a made for tv pg-13 crapfest. I was expecting better than this. The older movies are good compared to this one. Had to write a review. This was garbage.

Oh Good Grief!

[grahammwiles · 2/10 · 14 July 2019]

Now this is a real wet nappy film about an 80's classic horror brought into the 21st Century and failed so bad even a rewrite wont make it work.

Rediculous time waster. From the acting to the silly looking critters. This is clearly not what critters was like in the 1980's.

Don't bother watching this film. Might be fun with a whole bag of weed. 2 out of 10 for this garbage.

It's not a masterpiece but it's not boring at all either!

[serbanvaleria-09917 · 8/10 · 15 February 2021]

Easy, non boring watch. Much better than others with famous actors and higher ratings.

Not so bad

[horrorules · 6/10 · 6 August 2020]

Presonally i think that this movie is not that bad, ok it's simple, it's a b movie, a tv movie,filmed with few means, setereotyped and stupid characters, but at least there is a lot of gore and the critters are always cool. We are undoubtedly not at the levels of the first 3 films, but this film is definitely better than the terrible fourth chapter.

Jesus Krites! This is awful.

[udar55 · 1/10 · 27 July 2019]

Took in this last night. It is one of two CRITTERS reboots/sequels/whatever that hit this year and apparently this is the better of the two. Which makes me truly fear the Shudder series CRITTERS: A NEW BINGE because this one is terrible. The Krites and their voracious appetites descend up a small town looking for their queen and poor babysitting college student Drea (Tashiana Washington) gets caught in the middle. Shot in South Africa, this constitutes the fifth entry in the film series as producers Rupert Harvey and Barry Opper return. Dee Wallace also shows up for about 10 minutes and the filmmakers try to remake her in full Sarah Connor/Laurie Strode bad ass mode, which is tough because she was 70 when she shot this (scenes of her running showcase this). Even worse, they can't be bothered to state if she is the same character from the first film. Sure, you can make that mental connection (why else would she be monitoring alien activity in a bunker?) but she introduces herself to characters as "Aunt Dee." WTF? The filmmakers steadfastly refuse to use ANYTHING to use to the film's advantage. Example: We see the return of the infamous critter-ball and at one point it runs over a victim. Now this would be the moment for a gore gag - this is the first in the series to be rated R - where we see it roll over him and a few seconds later we could see a bloody, picked clean skeleton, right? Nope. Director Bobby Miller just has the guy fall and that's it. Hell, the town attack is five people running round a shopping mall parking lot with a critter puppet sewn to their pant leg. My favorite example of how lazy this film is - at one point Drea goes to see the disbelieving sheriff, her uncle, to tell him about the aliens. Now they legit have a good alien in their bag (a la GREMLINS). The Sheriff says, "I don't believe you" blah blah blah. Instead of ripping open the bag to show him and go, "Yes, they are real!" the lead girl goes, "Okay, guys we're leaving." Now I'm not asking for high art with films like this, but dammit Peter Jackson made BAD TASTE for $25,000. With so many talented folks working in the horror industry, how do folks like this get selected to make dreck like this?

Forgotten follow up

[dar0417 · 1/10 · 23 July 2019]

Yep, this followed up a solid 80s' film with this crap that needs to be forgotten. In fairness the critters looked the same.

Way to use those hand puppets!

[jesssika23 · 1/10 · 25 July 2019]

This follow up is just sad. The original Critters made back in the 80's had better effects than this one. I thought the storyline was ok or just under ok. The acting of some was tolerable but the others were not very good. It was like a socially awkward experiment...as if the actors were uncomfortable with actually acting.

Amateurish, But Not For Lack of Trying

[sheldonnylander · 3/10 · 16 September 2019]

"Critters Attack!" is a strange film to review. I honestly think this film was not made with reviews in mind. No, I mean really not made with reviews in mind, because it's hard to get a bead on what they were truly going for here. It seems like a reboot, but then Dee Wallace is in it and indicates that the Crites have been around before, although she behaves more like Lee from the first two films so maybe she's really Terrence Mann in disguise (who is conspicuously absent; I was waiting for him to pop up as it just doesn't feel like a Critters movie without Terrence Mann)...I don't know. So, let's break this down.

To start, you'll notice that, to the film's credit, they stick to primarily to practical effects. This is good as it's trying to at least feel like the original films. Honestly, CGI Crites would probably have been really bad. They even bring back the giant Critter Ball from the second movie, although still no human sized Crites as seen in the first film. Crites are puppets and should only be puppets, although at the same time, something about these new redesigned puppets feels a little off. They've always had big mouths, but now they've got flip-top heads. Eh...

However, the practical effects bring up a real oddity to this film. There are also a lot of prosthetics used for the Crites to chew on. Now, in and of itself, that wouldn't be an issue. What makes it odd is that it makes this film much more violent and gory than the previous ones. I like a good gory horror flick as much as the next person, but something about it feels...strange in a Critters movie. The previous films are very tame by comparison, with only two people dying in the first movie. This isn't necessarily bad as people who watched the old movies have grown up and are more mature now, but it does throw you a little bit.

Then we get to the script. This film feels like it was written by a first-year film student. It's nonsensical, goes all over the place with little focus, explanation, or even a satisfying ending, if you can even call it an ending since it just seems to stop. The characters are not well fleshed out and they resort to gimmicks to try and get us to remember some of them since they have no other characteristics, like a guy who's obsessed with bagpipes. Heck, I forgot younger boy in the main group was even there half the time since his gimmick is that he doesn't talk and only communicates by texting. They probably thought they were being funny, but instead it creates a major stumbling block.

Overall, while it's still a pretty bad film, but you can at least tell that the filmmakers were fans of the original and were trying to do something of a tribute, and let's be honest, unless you're a fan of at least the original movie, you're probably not going to see this one. In fact, that's exactly what this feels like: An amateurish fan film. You're not missing much if you avoid it or never even knew it existed, like me until I stumbled upon it completely by accident. I kind of wish I hadn't.

Tv movie

[danielcereto · 3/10 · 4 August 2019]

First, this a tv movie so it looks pretty cheap. Second the only thing related with the previous criters movies is the name. And last but not least there is no plot, pretty bad acting and no decent fx. So, overall a pretty bad movie even for fans like me that have watched all the criters movies. Avoid.

Boring...

[challe-edh · 3/10 · 26 July 2019]

Bad script, bad acting, bad effects. Why dee wallace is in this movie is a mystery for me.

CRITTERS ATTACK

[TCurtis9192 · 4/10 · 2 September 2019]

"CRITTERS: ATTACK" (2019, Miller) deserves plaudits in not substituting the puppets that the fans wanted for CGI Krites (although there are a couple of CGI moments elsewhere in the film and they're poor) and the gore effects are better than those in its predecessors.

"CRITTERS" (1986, Herek) was the top of a big pile of "GREMLINS" (1984, Dante) -like films and boasted very good puppets, a good plot, good effects, decent directing, a good cast, and plenty of darkly funny moments. Don Opper and Terrence Mann reprised their roles in the three follow ups and all four films are dramatically different from one another in many ways.

"CRITTERS: ATTACK" isn't CRITTERS 5, it's not a remake of CRITTERS either, it's a reboot. That fact gave the filmmakers the freedom to break away from the well established Krite lore and inject some new ideas into the mix- a bad idea, really.

First of all the Queen Krite. The one thing the franchise never had was its own Gizmo and it never should have had one, but now it has a Gizmo. Making the evil Krites all male is not clever, funny, sensible or meaningful in any way in fact, it raises a lot of questions.

Secondly the baby Krites spawning in a human body before popping out and growing into Krites, who asked for that? Also it conjures up images of Mogwai and Gremlin reproduction. So another imitation that shouldn't have been.

Thirdly sound kills them now? So they stopped short of having death by sunlight and opted for an "ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES" (1978, De Bello) deal? Hmm.

Dee Wallace Stone's appearance was not nice. Firstly she has a heart sinkingly corny entrance, secondly she smiles at the sight of people being massacred in front of her, and thirdly she just isn't a bounty hunter despite professing so (everyone, a bounty hunter hunts for a bounty (money). No one offered a payout for killing the Krites here. Unfortunately the term bounty hunter has been wrongly applied...).

The directing is slow and often lingers uncomfortably on the most boring moments or poorly acted scenes. The script is not good. Neither is the story. The acting is bad all round and this film might break new ground when it comes to poor decision making by characters in a film (new but not good ground).

The music is bland, like stock music, which is unfortunate because horror needs effective music.

That being said the Krites (although strangely large) are still puppets and it was nice to see the big critter-ball roll back in. There are some funny moments involving the Krites too. In that respect it is true to the forerunners and the fans.

In short it's a film that completely lacks direction and creativity. I am glad that there's a Krite revival going on now though and I hope something great comes of it.

Terrible

[dominickjenkins · 1/10 · 30 July 2019]

Why would they make this movie so bad, the original critters was a great b horror movie. Critters attack remind me a kids feel good movie for some reason.

An awsome time travel to the 80's!

[tothleventetamas · 8/10 · 10 November 2020]

Perfect sequel! Just as bad as the 3rd one, and it doesn't want to be anything else. Loved it with two beers, lol! One dimensional characters, absolute meaningless and ridiculous dialogues, lovely puppets instead of CGI, so everithing is in it's place. Maybe it's gonna bring up the next Leonardo DiCaprio, who knows! I WANT IT ON TAPE!!! :D

NOT EVEN CLOSE TO AS BAD PEOPLE ARE SAYING

[biscutbuu69 · 6/10 · 16 October 2019]

I've been a fan of the Critters series since I was in my early teens, now in my 20s we have a new one and I was pretty excited, especially after The New Binge series came out on Shudder and was bad but pretty enjoyable. I had hopes that this would be a bit better considering its a film rather than a web series. And it is pretty decent, not great, but lets not lie here after the first Critters film the series went downhill pretty quickly but they were still fun and tons of people are just as nostalgic for the sequels as they are for the original. After seeing the average rating and high number of negative reviews on here I expected it to be as bad, maybe even worse than The New Binge, well I'm here to tell ya, this is nowhere near bad especially when compared to the original sequels or The New Binge. Either way, lets actually talk about this.

So as an entry in the series Critters 5 is about on par with the first or second sequel, its pretty much a standalone film though, you can watch and enjoy this film without any prior knowledge of the series and enjoy it just as much. The film is decently acted and has some good effects and practical puppetry and gore. The writing is fine, it kinda feels like a fan fiction with a sequel this late in the series trying to add more lore but its not as bad as the fan fiction feeling of The New Binge, if you have watched that series you will know why.

Judging the film on its own, its a pretty fun and entertaining direct to video/TV movie that is worth a shot if you got time to kill and are a fan of the series. Compared to the rest of the series, especially if you include everything, including The New Binge its a welcome entry to the series.

Is it bad? Sure from a serious critical stance it is, but that doesn't mean it isn't of quality in some ways and doesn't mean its not enjoyable. See it for yourself before letting the intensely negative, all caps, three sentence long reviews calling it "THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE!! PLEASE STAY AWAY!" discourage you.

I give it a 6.5/10

the critters are too slow puppetish

[surfisfun · 4/10 · 12 August 2019]

Culture crypt review misguided me on this one. should have been better puppet or effects filming to make them more alive. may as well made it look shittier wt found footage style. I dont remember the first movie but I sure hope the acting and story was better. not recommended, be ready to fast forward and watch in 20min.

An embarrassment to the series

[watcher101 · 2/10 · 16 August 2019]

I greatly enjoyed the Critters series, and was quite happy to learn that they created another one. But I was anything but happy after watching it. Pretty much everything about the movie is awful. What more, they even ret-con a bunch of stuff from the previous four movies, from having the Critter species go extinct in the fourth film to giving them a queen when in every other movie there was never any queen needed for them to reproduce. Oh, and lets not forget the stupidity of making the queen a good Critter trying to stop the rest of her race from devouring the earth. This movie was one big waste of time.

Not what is used to be!

[sandvink · 5/10 · 21 December 2019]

If you liked the older movies you will not like this one. Critters should be loaded with some gore and lots of humor. That just does not happen here. At least the action is going in a steady pace but the acting is also not that good. I gave it a 5 out of 10 but seriously i have been generous.