A group of alien creatures known as the 'Krites' escape from a meteor prison station and head towards Earth, so the leaders of the station instantly sets two shape-shifting bounty hunters out to retrieve them. On Earth, the rural Brown family, Helen (Dee Wallace), Jay (Billy "Green" Bush), their daughter April (Nadine Van Der Velde) and son Brad (Scott Grimes), live peacefully on their farm in Kansas. The Krites (or 'Critters') arrive on Earth and wreak havoc, attacking police cars and encroaching on the Brown family's farm. The bounty hunters arrive too, witnessed by Jay and Brad, and aggressively seek out the critters, as the tiny terrors descend on the Brown's.
Seemingly both pro and anti-Spielberg in nature, Critters benefits from - like so many horror films of its era and ilk - the puppet design. While the whole concept is a thinly-disguised rip-off of the vastly superior Gremlins (1984), the critters are certainly enjoyable to watch, as, unlike the gremlins, they dispose of people in variously gruesome ways with their razor-sharp teeth and their spikes (which they project like darts from their back). It's just a shame that the makers decided to crowbar in the alien bounty hunter sub-plot that not only takes the action away from the critters, but gives the film a very silly, slapstick edge that reminded me of Suburban Commando (1991).
While Spielberg had set the family blockbuster groundwork with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and the massively successful E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), depicting the wonder of alien invasion from the view of the family unit, Critters seems to be happy enough following this familiar path, but giving the film of a more violent edge (in one scene, a critter bites the head of Brad's E.T. teddy). It is these aspects that work for and against the film, giving it a warm familiarity of the line of 'kid-friendly' 80's horror/sci-fi movies, but reminded you that Spielberg did it far, far better. But at only 82 minutes, it doesn't demand much attention, but manages to be entertaining enough when it grabs it.
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