By Geno McGahee
I’ve always been a big fan of the CRITTERS franchise. After all these years, we get CRITTERS ATTACK from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital for $24.98 / $19.98 / $19.99 SRP. First, it was great to see the critters back and raising hell again, but there were a few things that I found less than great.
Drea (Tashiana Washington) wants more out of life but has to sit back and watch her best friend get accepted into the college that she was rejected from. She takes on a job as a babysitter to watch Jake (Jack Fulton) and Trissy (Ava Preston). She brings along her brother, Phillip (Jaeden Noel), and before they know it, they are dealing with critters. They opt to go for a walk in the woods and come across a new sort of critter, a white one, and they adopt her, basically.
The best parts of this film are when the critters are playing. It has always been that way in the CRITTERS franchise. The personalities of the critters bring a certain fun factor to the films even when the story is mediocre and this film has its fair share of problems with balancing character development and critters action. When the critters were on the screen, I loved it. I found much of the rest struggling to bring it together.
Aunt Dee (Dee Wallace) returns to the series as a badass critter killer and it just seemed a little out of character. Heavily influenced by Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis, Aunt Dee was on a mission and was tough as nails, but she’s only on the fringes of the film and, unless you are really familiar with the series, you may not know what she is doing or why she is doing it.
As the Critters raise hell, we get a group of youngsters and Aunt Dee taking on all the little furry bad guys. The new white female critter gives the alien bad guys a new wrinkle and is a large part of the climax of this film.
CRITTERS ATTACK is great when the critters are on the screen, but much of the rest of the film struggles with limited character development and some inconsistency. In the end, I do recommend this film, especially if you like the CRITTERS franchise. Seeing the little furry puppets laugh at the expense of others. I wish they had more of the critters being naughty. In the end though, the good outweighs the bad.
Here are some notes about the release:
SPECIAL FEATURES
• Entineering Gore; Designing Critters (featurette)
• Critters: An Out-of-this-World Experience (featurette)
• The Critter Ball (featurette)
• Scene Specific Commentary with Director Bobby Miller and a Critter
BASICS
Street Date: July 23, 2019
Order Due Date: June 18, 2019
Running Time: Approx. 89 minutes / Enhanced Content: Approx 22 minutes
Presented in 16×9 widescreen format
Blu-ray Combo Pack
Price: $24.98 SRP
1 BD + 1 DVD + Digital
DVD
Price: $19.98 SRP
1 DVD
