And Now In Space!

I have pointed this out before but just about every flailing horror series eventually goes to space. Friday the 13thOne of the most famous Slasher film franchises, the Friday the 13th series saw multiple twists and turn before finally settling on the formula everyone knows and loves: Jason Voorhees killing campers 'round Camp Crystal Lake., HellraiserBorn from a short story by Clive Barker, this series introduced a new kind of killer to the burgeoning 1980s Slasher scene, a demon from Hell with the promise of pleasures for those who opened a puzle box. Those pleasures, specifically, were: gore, screams, gore, terror, and gore., Leprechaun, each and every one has a desperate jump into space for a later sequel, and it usually spells the end for the franchise. Jason got a reboot after Jason X and then has barely been seen since. The Cenobites went straight to video after Hellraiser: Bloodline. The Leprechaun was already lurking in the budget bargain bin by the time Leprechaun 4: In Space came out. Space is the death knell for a functioning horror series, and Critters 4 is no exception. This film marked the functional end for the original series and it took almost 30 years before another film was even released.

Hell, if we follow the same logic, even the Muppets couldn’t recover from going to space. Muppets from Space was a theatrical failure and also marked the last film in the franchise to have direct involvement from the Jim Henson Company before the characters were bought by Disney. Space is a cold, empty, uncaring vacuum from which no one escapes. Not even the Muppets.

In fairness to the Critters series, the franchise was crap to begin with and had already gone directo-to-video with Critters 3. When you think about it, the series really couldn’t fall much further anyway. Going into this fourth (and for the main series, final) film in the franchise I really didn’t have high hopes. I knew, from the description of the movie, that we were going to space and that’s already a bad sign. But also, this movie was made and filmed back-to-back with the third movie, and we saw how bad that film was. The fourth film couldn’t possibly be any better.

And functionally, it’s a yes and no. On the one hand, Critters 4 is plagued by many of the same issues as the third: no budget, cheap effects, simple sets, bad acting from the character actors. Except there are some qualities that actually make this film better than the third, and maybe even better than all the other films in this series. It has some ambition. It uses the futuristic setting to at least try some new things. It attempts to push the series forward and stake new ground. It effectively sets itself up to be its own reboot and evolution for Critters. It doesn’t go anywhere, because the franchise was trash and no one cared, but it did try. And that, deep down, is better than nothing, really.

Charlie McFadden (Don Keith Opper), somehow our hero of the series, has found the last two Crite eggs, fulfilling his role as hunter of the critters and killer of their species. Except, right before he can eliminate them he gets a message from the galactic high command, telling him that he’s in violation of several laws. Apparently, despite being assigned the job of wiping out all crites from existence, now he’s being told these two have to be saved because they’re the last of their kind. A ship is sent to him by his superior officer, Ug (Terrence Mann), and he’s to store the two critter eggs on there for freezing and safe keeping.

Charlie does put the eggs on board, but unfortunately he also gets trapped on the ship himself, frozen and sent up into space along with the eggs. Many, many years later (either 50, per the dialogue of the script, or 500 per a calendar that is repeatedly referenced) Charlie’s pod is discovered by a salvage crew. Led by their sketchy captain, Rick Buttram (Anders Hove), the crew – Angela Bassett as first officer Fran, Brad Dourif as engineer and tech expert Al 'Albert' Bert, Eric Da Re as mechanic Bernie, and Paul Whitthorne as apprentice Ethan – pull the pod in and discover it’s owned by TerraCorp. They contact the corp and get an offer for three times what the salvage is worth if it’s delivered to a TerraCorp station, and they’re given directions to one. That’s fine for the rest of the crew, who want the money, but the captain doesn’t want the offer and feels slighted. So when they get to the station, which is curiously abandoned, he breaks in, unleashing Charlie, and the crites, and chaos immediately ensues.

The problem with this film is the same problem every Critters film up until now has had: the mini-monsters at the center of these films just aren’t scary. They don’t have the same level or articulation as gremlins, nor do they have as much personality. They’re weird hand puppets, in effect, more cuddly and silly than terrifying, but because they’re so limited in ability they can’t really do anything interesting or effective. This film isn’t really able to get much more out of these creatures, effectively rolling them around or gently posing them the whole time, and having characters react to them. For the most part it doesn’t work.

That doesn’t matter as much here, though, because the critters are actually only a small piece of the big puzzle this time around. Instead, the bigger issue for the crew is that they’re stuck on an abandoned space station and have to wait for their contact to arrive so they can get paid. Meanwhile, the computer controlling the station, Angela (Martine Beswick), begins breaking down, causing more and more problems for the crew. Oh, and the station is sitting on a faulty nuclear drive that may explode at any time. All of that adds far more tension and chaos to the proceedings than anything the critters can do.

Honestly I liked this film better than the other ones because the film has no problem ignoring the critters for whole spans of the runtime. We get treated to the characters learning about each other, exploring the space station, trying to figure out what’s been going on there. It has a lot of material to explore and the critters are secondary to all of it. I know it doesn’t say much about the quality of a franchise when one of its best stories removes the central monsters from the equation for much of its length, but that’s just where we are. This film is better because it downplays its central monsters.

With that said, the film is still bad. It’s a cheap, knock-off sci-fi film that can’t even figure out its own setting. Is it 50 years in the future or 500? Charlie and the crew act like everyone he’s ever known should be dead, but Charlie’s kid friends from all three other films would only be in their sixties. They would likely all still be alive. And the crew all act like Charlie being an Earthling is weird and strange, but how far could humanity get into the stars in 50 years, really? I ask that as someone trying to watch this film from the perspective of 1992, when this movie came out, and not 2024 when Charlie would soon be found anyway. We aren’t in space now, out colonizing the stars, yet, but even back then that had to feel like a pipedream. My guess is they meant for Charlie to be frozen for 500 years, but then someone in the studio thought that was dumb, made them change it, and then didn’t notice how it messed up the story as well as some props they already had used.

On top of that, most of the performances are bad. Anders Hove, Eric Da Re, and Paul Whitthorne all feel like they belong in a D-budget Critters film as their performances are equally flat and hammy. Whitthorne, especially, is a sour note since he’s bad in this role after all three of the previous films managed to find solid kid actors to star in them. Whitthorne does not rise to the occasion. The only two good actors giving good performances are Angela Bassett, who was making the bad sci-fi circuit at the time before Hollywood realized how great she is, and Brad Douriff, who is a horror legend, so in both cases it’s not a surprise they’re great. They’re both too good to be in this film.

Frankly, this film is terrible. It’s bad and goofy and silly without actually being much fun. It’s the best of the Critters lot only by grace of the fact that all the movies in this series up to this point were terrible. Saying you’re the best piece of shit around still makes you a piece of shit. I found I could tolerate this film better than the rest, but that doesn’t make it watchable. No one wanted a fourth film in this series, and yet we got one anyway. I’m happy all the actors in this film got paid and they got to continue pulling in Screen Actors’ insurance. But there’s absolutely no reason to go back and watch this film unless, like me, you just have to see everything. This film, like the rest of the Critters movies, is a hard pass.