Critters (1986) is the movie for this Sunday’s “monsterdon” watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling!
- Just start watching that movie this Sunday, March 9, 2025 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT, which is
2am Monday UTCCORRECTION 1am Monday UTC bc of US daylight savings - and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon
- I usually open two web browser windows on a computer side-by-side. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something.
How to watch the movie:
- someone plans to stream it on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time
- tubi (US, England, Canada, Australia, NZ?; uBlock Origin adblock on firefox works): https://tubitv.com/movies/100001406/critters
- if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/critters
The plot follows a group of small, furry aliens with carnivorous behavior escaping from two shape-shifting bounty hunters, landing in a small countryside town to feast on its inhabitants.
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On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 52% approval rating based on 50 reviews, with an average of 5.5/10. The site’s consensus reads: “While Critters ekes out some fun from a game cast and screwball tone, the titular monsters fail to deliver the credible menace that makes a creature feature satisfying”.[7] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film three out of four stars: “What makes Critters more than a ripoff are its humor and its sense of style. This is a movie made by people who must have had fun making it”.[8]
Marylynn Uricchio, film critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described the film as an enjoyable, if unoriginal, low budget monster movie. Uricchio wrote: “Critters isn’t a memorable or even very slick movie, but it is good fun. What it lacks in substance it makes up for with a perverse kind of charm”.[9] Caryn James of The New York Times complained that the movie lacked humor and suspense: “Critters just doesn’t make the audience laugh or jump often enough”.[10]
Alex Stewart reviewed Critters for White Dwarf #83, and stated that “Critters scuttled by quite pleasantly. Nothing really stands out, despite M. Emmet Walsh as the sweaty sheriff, and a scene wherein a couple of Heavy Metal bounty hunters blow away a Baptist church, but the film actually thinks through how the Browns react, as a family, to the anti-social little aliens”.
When I was a kid I remember that running on HBO. It might be the first horror movie I watched. If my brother and I were afraid of the dark, it was critters that we said we were afraid of. Good times.
Oh wow that reminds me… when I was a kid around 8 or 9 we went to Italy. We were watching TV at the end of the day when suddenly a bunch of text comes on the screen. I could read Spanish, so I was looking at it very intently trying to figure out what the Italian text said, when… Hard cut to zombies attacking the camera! Turns out the text said something like “do not under any circumstances let little kids watch the following movie ad.” That was my introduction to horror movies!