CRITTERS ATTACK (2019)

Studio:      Warner Bros.
Director:    Bobby Miller
Writer:      Scott Lobdell
Producer:  Rupert Harvey, Barry Opper
Stars:     Tashiana Washington, Ava Preston, Jack Fulton, Jaeden Noel, Dee Wallace

Review Score:

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Summary:

A babysitter teams with three kids and an unusual bounty hunter when killer alien creatures invade their small town.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Two separate space pods land near Beacon Pine Lake. A Crite from one of the pods kills curious sushi deliveryman Kevin Loong. Kevin’s corpse subsequently incubates more of the diminutive alien creatures.

Obsessed with alien conspiracies, Phillip asks his uncle Lewis Haines, who is also the local sheriff, about the UFOs he saw while stargazing. Phillip’s older sister Drea disappointedly tells Lewis that Leroy University rejected her application. Knowing Drea is desperate to attend Leroy because her deceased mother went there, Lewis tries giving his niece a pep talk.

Drea goes to her job at Chef Loong’s sushi restaurant. With his nephew Kevin missing, Chef sends Drea on a delivery run to Leroy University.

At Leroy’s campus, Drea works her way past bagpipe-playing security guard Shawn, who has a crush on Drea. Drea delivers the sushi to student Gregory Sax and discovers Gregory’s girlfriend is her estranged former friend Mandy. To help Drea get into Leroy, Mandy refers Drea for a babysitting gig with Professor Lacy, who is on the board of admissions.

Crites kill backpacker Dougie while he camps. Crites also kill forest rangers Bob, Carol, and Jonathan.

Phillip joins Drea for her babysitting gig because he has a crush on Professor Lacy’s intelligent daughter Trissy. Drea and Phillip also meet the professor’s son Jake, who insists on only communicating through text messages.

Drea takes Phillip, Trissy, and Jake into the woods for a picnic. There, they find a friendly female Crite that Trissy names Bianca. Recognizing that Bianca is injured, the quartet takes her to the ranger station, but no one answers.

Using their ability to smell Bianca, Crites follow Drea and the three kids back to the Lacy house. On their way, the Crites kill a telephone repairman and inadvertently destroy a power box that disables the town’s cellphone signal.

Crites break into the Lacy house and attack Jake. Drea, Phillip, Trissy, and Jake flee, but Trissy insists that Drea go back for Bianca. While Drea retrieves Bianca, Phillip mentions to Trissy that their mother died in a car accident and Drea blames herself because their mother was on her way to collect Drea from a party she wasn’t supposed to attend.

Drea and the three kids go to the sheriff’s office. However, Uncle Lewis refuses to take their claims of aliens seriously.

A bounty hunter undercover as mild-mannered Aunt Dee accesses a Crite monitoring station hidden in her home. Dee begins hunting the aliens as they start killing citizens all over town.

Lewis learns the alien threat is real when Crites attack him while investigating the Lacy house. Lewis discovers shrill noises hurt the creatures after his siren explodes a Crite. A Crite fatally wounds Lewis, but he makes it back to Drea in time to tell her about the Crites’ weakness. Before dying, Lewis also confesses that he was supposed to retrieve Drea on the night her mother died, but he was too drunk to drive.

With her own car disabled, Chef Loong lets Drea use his van while he stays behind to battle Crites. Drea drives Bianca and the three kids to Leroy University where they plan to retrieve a satellite phone in Professor Lacy’s office to call for help.

Crites kill Shawn on the university campus. Crites also form into a giant ball that rolls over Gregory and crushes him.

Jake realizes the Crites have been using Bianca to follow them, which forces Trissy to leave Bianca in her mother’s office. Unexpectedly, Bianca morphs into a more deadly form and attacks the Crites drawn to her.

Drea, Phillip, Trissy, and Jake flee outside to the football field. Mandy joins them as they battle a horde of Crites using landscaping tools and an airhorn.

Dee joins the battle. Dee explains she is a bounty hunter searching for the queen Crite. Dee locates Bianca and prepares to kill her, but Bianca saves Dee from another Crite. Dee realizes Bianca followed the male Crites to Earth in order to stop them from taking over the planet.

Dee regroups with Drea and the others outside as a giant ball of Crites rolls toward them. Dee gives Drea a second laser gun. While Phillip helps his sister aim, Dee and Drea fire their weapons to explode the Crite ball.

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Review:

Producers made an intriguing choice by tapping Bobby Miller to direct “Critters Attack.” Miller’s previous film “The Cleanse” starred Johnny Galecki as a down-on-his-luck sad sack. Galecki’s strange self-help solution for bodily purification expelled vomit that inexplicably transformed into a mini-monster straight out of a Jim Henson hallucination. Although the film featured these pint-sized puppets that resembled close cousins of Crites, “The Cleanse” (review here) was actually a quirkily introspective indie tailored for the film festival circuit, not for a midnight movie slot on Syfy.

Even though Miller had prior experience working with grotesque little ghouls, it seemed slightly strange to hire an up-and-coming auteur with an arthouse eye to helm an intentionally cheesy creature feature. On the other hand, it also seemed like an inspired stroke for putting an unusually off-kilter spin on a 30-year-old B-movie franchise that had seen more fruitful days.

Curiously though, Bobby Miller doesn’t turn “Critters Attack” into a Jarmuschian personal essay loaded with metaphoric meaning or anything hipster like that. Miller and writer Scott Lobdell, who also scripted “Happy Death Day” (review here), instead keep “Critters Attack” respectfully, yet snarkily, close to its roots in airy drive-in delirium. Without any technical tricks like film scratches or overblown “Stranger Things” nostalgia, Miller and Lobdell tune “Critters Attack” to a fun 1980s tone purely through staging, story, and style.

For the first 20 minutes, the film even looks like it might take place in an indeterminate time period that very well could be 1986. The first kid we meet is Phillip who, instead of looking at a cellphone or a video game, gazes through a telescope at two UFOs streaking over his small bumpkin town. His older sister Drea drives a car with a cassette deck, and receives a literal mix tape from the bagpipe-playing campus security guard who harbors a crush on her.

Then the movie mentions podcasts and introduces other modern amenities confirming it actually is set in the present. Still, Miller holds tightly to Amblin-esque touches to keep a thick coat of throwback paint over proceedings. A homey score accompanies inviting establishing shots of pleasant neighborhood houses. Drea and Phillip typify affable siblings who were commonplace in PG/PG-13 movies of The Reagan Era, although they receive an update by being a mixed race family, which was only common on “Diff’rent Strokes.” Since the tragic car accident death of their mother two years ago, which Drea blames herself for, they’ve been raised by Uncle Lewis. Also acting as the local sheriff, Lewis means well, but is secretly an alcoholic who doesn’t put stock in the kids’ seemingly crazy claims.

With the way we’re initially lulled into feeling like we’re watching something in the vein of “E.T.” or “Gremlins,” “Critters Attack” sneakily harkens back to a time in cinema when a group of kids could find an alien creature in the woods and not immediately think to stream their discovery on YouTube. With her brother accompanying her on a babysitting assignment, Drea and her weird wards Trissy and Jake find a friendly female Crite who basically serves as a surrogate Gizmo. What the foursome doesn’t yet know is that Stripe and his grem- er, killer Crites arrived in a second spaceship and are about to go on a rampage.

One of the movie’s bigger bummers is that lead protagonist Drea starts out too mopey. Her disappointment over getting rejected by the university her mother attended defines Drea, which makes for a depressing attitude that isn’t immediately endearing.

But if I’m going to volley complaints at “Critters Attack” for not developing thin characters as deeply as a proper drama, I’m focusing on the wrong frequency. A wise writer like Scott Lobdell and a deft director like Bobby Miller know all about the tropes they put in play. Rest assured they don’t think the bit about Drea’s guilt over her mother’s death is original.

Cheeky triteness is by design since the filmmakers recognize no one comes to “Critters” for the plot. MacGuffins exclusively move pieces around according to how everyone needs to be arranged for the next scene of mad mayhem which, let’s be honest, is the true main attraction for these movies. In that regard, “Critters Attack” does not disappoint.

“Critters Attack” could pass for a soft remake of the first “Critters” film. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that was the creative directive being worked with, as this sequel follows the original’s formula to a T while making marked improvements that increase contemporary entertainment value.

We don’t get a goof like Charlie McFadden, but we do get Dee Wallace taking over intergalactic bounty hunter duty, and what’s not to like about that? Loose storylines fade into looser sequences merely meant to set up silly sights of sushi chefs slashing Crites, airhorns exploding alien heads, and a giant Katamari Damacy ball of critters rolling over a fleeing college student. “Critters Attack” is the movie “Critters” would have been if it had the modest budgetary uptick to go a little crazier with its irreverent ideas for Crite carnage.

Clearly, Miller and Lobdell intended to harness the first film’s 20th-century energy and refashion it into a flighty 21st-century flick. Arguably, they do too good of a job because while “Critters Attack” pairs well as a direct successor to 1986’s “Critters,” it’s almost too similar to fully feel like its own separate thing. Nevertheless, if we’re grading according to how well execution matches intent, you’ve got to give it up to “Critters Attack” for being as gorily gooey and charmingly goofy as a “Critters” film ought to be.

Review Score: 65

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