On their way home from a vacation, railway worker Clifford & his two children Annie & Johnny pull up into a rest stop with a flat tyre. While Clifford fixes the tyre, Annie & Johnny encounter Charlie McFadden, who warns them about the Crites. They dismiss him as crazy but a group of Crites hitch a ride on the underside of the RV. Once the family return to their home – an apartment complex that is due to be demolished to make way for a mini-mall by the landlord (who secretly plans to force the tenants to vacate without having to pay them relocation costs) – the Crites begin terrorising the building.
Critters was an enterprising knockoff of Gremlins that somehow made a name for itself in video afterlife. It spawned three sequels – the turgid Critters 2, this one & a further sequel with Critters 4. These days, the Critters sequels, particularly this one, have been regarded as a bad joke by the actors in it, especially Leonardo DiCaprio, who made his debut here as an adolescent.
Despite the negative publicity, Critters 3 is actually not too bad – in fact it is the closest the sequels get to matching the light family friendly fun of the original. The Critters are kept to the shadows for the majority of the film but once the lights go off, the real fun begins. Scribe David J. Schow, who would soon get famous with his script for The Crow about three years after this, gets a lot of mileage out of the Critters' attacks – and their appearances. It is a far cry from the usual output of Schow's bread & butter splatterpunk stories but it is still a fun ride. He & director Kristine Peterson do their best to cater to genre fans without letting the adults feel cheated by having the Critters do their usual thing & having Don Opper's bounty hunter return to blast the Critters yet again. Fellow hunter Terrence Mann also returns but only in the end-credits sequence that follows the film. If there is anything wrong with the film, it would be that the film is far too soft for the bodycount to happen, but the dogleg twists provide some suspense for the audience.
Critters was an enterprising knockoff of Gremlins that somehow made a name for itself in video afterlife. It spawned three sequels – the turgid Critters 2, this one & a further sequel with Critters 4. These days, the Critters sequels, particularly this one, have been regarded as a bad joke by the actors in it, especially Leonardo DiCaprio, who made his debut here as an adolescent.
Despite the negative publicity, Critters 3 is actually not too bad – in fact it is the closest the sequels get to matching the light family friendly fun of the original. The Critters are kept to the shadows for the majority of the film but once the lights go off, the real fun begins. Scribe David J. Schow, who would soon get famous with his script for The Crow about three years after this, gets a lot of mileage out of the Critters' attacks – and their appearances. It is a far cry from the usual output of Schow's bread & butter splatterpunk stories but it is still a fun ride. He & director Kristine Peterson do their best to cater to genre fans without letting the adults feel cheated by having the Critters do their usual thing & having Don Opper's bounty hunter return to blast the Critters yet again. Fellow hunter Terrence Mann also returns but only in the end-credits sequence that follows the film. If there is anything wrong with the film, it would be that the film is far too soft for the bodycount to happen, but the dogleg twists provide some suspense for the audience.