Critters Attack (2019) - Should have done better

Balls of alien fluff rolling around like killer hedgehogs, murdering people with their glowing red eyes and hideous spiked teeth.  What could you possibly want from an eighties horror film?  Three sequels maybe?  Or maybe not.  Just like most horror films (and possibly all films in general?), the sequels do tend to be steadily inferior to those that had come before them.  However, just because the original 'Critters' spawned three sequels back in the eighties and early nineties, didn't mean they were bad.

Now, some twenty years later, the little hungry balls of fur are back again - and I was delighted for the reunion.  Then I watched it.  Have you ever sat through a film where you know something is wrong, or just doesn't work and yet you can't nail it down and put your finger on it.  2019's 'Critters Attack' was like that for me.

Yes, the nasty little aliens are back and - again - are the 'real' stars.  The humans are merely there to provide the monsters something to scream and bleed while they get eaten.  I think one of my main problems with the film was that they tried too hard to make the central characters relatable and give them all backstories.  It didn't work.  They just felt annoying.  Then you had the secondary characters who were only on screen for about a minute before they were devoured mercilessly.

The special effects on the monsters are nice, but perhaps the film borrows too much of what worked in previous installments and this feels more of a cheap (yes, it has that 'made for TV' feel about it) remake, rather than a sequel.

By the end of the film I was just preying that the final act would end.  I really can hardly recall how it actually ended.  I could tell by the time that it was nearly over, but had checked out mid-way.  If I had anything better to do I would probably not have bothered watching the second half at all, as the unlikeable characters really didn't do much for me and, by the time the credits rolled, I wished that the Critters had eaten the lot of them.

4/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)