Critters 3

A young family stop off at a lay-by on their way home. At the lay-by they meet bounty hunter Charlie who warns them about something living in the woods. However that `something' has just attached it self under their mobile home and hitches a ride back to their tenement block where the critters cause havoc amongst the residents.

Lets be honest – no one say to be shocked to discover this is a cheap little film that doesn't have too much going for it. The plot is the usual – people hunted by critters – stuff, this time in a building so it's like Die Hard with aliens….err no! The story doesn't matter as the action is what counts.

Sadly the action is poor – it's not really gory and the critter attacks are always more funny than thrilling. There is no real excitement or tension and it's all a bit predictable – take a guess who'll live and who'll die – the cute kids or the evil landlord? See! The one thing it does have though is a sort of humour – the critters have senses of humours and are cruel and some of this is amusing.

However the comedy is nowhere near the one it aspires to – Gremlins, and really the funniest bit is how silly the whole thing is. Needless to say the acting is poor – some people can't even be mauled convincingly. But it's interesting to see DiCaprio's debut, even if he looks about 9 years old!

Really this is a bit of dumb fun that is daft and slightly shoddy. It's may just pass the time but there are much better horror/comedies out there if you want them.

In case you don't know, 'Critters 3' is best known for being the first ever film to feature Leonardo DiCaprio. Here, he plays a kid who is a kid. Then, forever after, he was destined to play an adult who looks like a kid. But then that's just me being bitter at his seeming inability to age.

Anyway, if you haven't seen 'Critters 3' then you might want to start with the first two, as they're arguably better and, well, chronology and all that. The Critters are little alien monsters who crash-landed on Earth and generally eat everyone and everything – or rather everyone and everything who isn't one of the lead cast. These baddies tend to only eat people you won't really care about. Or at least they certainly do now! I haven't seen another monster/slasher film where the villains do so little damage to so few people. If the Critters franchise was ever really classed as 'horror' (which it wasn't really – it was more only every horror with a spoonful of comedy). Now, it really is played out tongue-in-cheek with no real attempts to scare you. The Critters roll and bounce around the place, bumping into things and come across more like Mr Bean with bigger teeth than anything that really threatens humankind.

Critters 3 is a short film. And for good reason. There really isn't that much in the way of plot to fill it. You get the little monsters brought back from the countryside into a big city. You'd think that with the added number of human-prey this would make a change from the farm-country the previous two were set in. However, the whole film is basically set in one apartment block. And, for some reason, no one (Critter or human) ever really seems to make much of a play to leave the building. You could argue that this creates an air of tension and claustrophobia. But it doesn't. It's just a cheap continuation of the franchise.

Yes, I know I'm being kind of negative. And this is yet another step down for the franchise. But that's not to say that I didn't find some enjoyment in it. The Critters themselves – one again – are the real stars and, for all their 'prat-falls' they're still quite fun to watch.

If you like your eighties monster-horror films then you're probably best off sticking to the first one (which most people seem to think is best, personally, I preferred part 2, but anyway...). However, if you REALLY like the Critters and want to see more of them, you can try this – it's the sort of film where you can surf the net and watch it at the same time and still miss much. Plus, did I mention it had baby-faced Leo in it? He's being chased my fur-balls – c'mon, that's got to be worth watching, right?

A group of people find themselves face-to-face with the ravenous, intergalactic toothy terrors known as Krites, and must battle for their lives—this time in a run down, inner-city tenement block. Help eventually arrives in the form of heavily armed Krite hunter Charlie (Don Opper) and chaos ensues.

Critters 3 is most notable for being the less-than-auspicious movie debut of triple Oscar-nominated, Hollywood A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio. Unsurprisingly, Leo acquits himself rather well, doing all one could really ask of a kid acting opposite crap hand puppets, but with the script being little more than an uninspired rehash of elements from the previous two efforts, even the acting talent of DiCaprio cannot prevent this from being very mediocre B-movie nonsense.

Also starring a young Aimee Brooks, the total hottie from 2003 horror flick Monster Man, and Joseph and Christian Cousins, who played the sickeningly cute kid from Kindergarten Cop.

Well if you don't have that much money, you kind of have to. This was done simultaneously with part 4 - with the cumulative budget of what they had for the very first movie. So two movies for the price of one. Which is I guess a byproduct of the failure of Critters 2 at the box office at least back then. There is a nice story about the boxoffice in the audio commentary on the disc of part 2 or in the hour long documentary.

Back to this though, which continues the "tradition" of having people that later were involved in the Titanic movie. In this case we have a very young Leonardo DiCaprio. I can't imagine him talking to anyone publicly about this movie of course, but it is one of those curiosities. So this plays out in a relatively close space - with at least one familiar face coming back to help the humans - if they can be helped of course. And again we have a PG-13 rating, but still violence and blood included

This has to be the worse Critter movie in the series, full of cheap effects and bad acting. The storyline is just as bad and the acting is terrible. Why is this movie fun? Because there is so much good material to make fun of and mock. It's not scary, and it's not really any good in the Sci-Fi department, but as a bad film to make fun of, its great. Don't watch this film if you're looking for a good movie, watch this film if you're looking for a good film to make cracks at.