Critters: A New Binge (2019)

The Critters are back!  The Critters movies were so much fun and the franchise has been in limbo for quite a while now so it was about time it got a new entry.  Unfortunately A New Binge is going to let many people down.  Before I go into the show a bit, must note that A New Binge is presented as a TV series though clearly it was not made to be one.  A New Binge is split up into 8 episodes and each is only 10 to 11 minutes long only, and there is no clear starting and stopping point to any of these episodes.  This was most definitely produced as a normal movie that for whatever reasons was chopped up and sold as a TV series, which is streamed right now on Shudder as a service exclusive.  Perhaps the reason for this is because while A New Binge was being produced, another reboot film was announced and started production as well.  Imagine that they released this as a TV series to simply make it stand out from the upcoming movie.  

 Our hero ladies and gentleman

So this Critters entry quickly goes wrong right from the get go as we are taken directly to space and meet the Critters who are thankfully practical puppets, but then comes in a ton of bad CG.  The special effects are appalling for a 2019 production, this is some direct to video 90's video quality of CG and the show uses way too much of it.  Seriously if you can't afford the budget for CG, use it sparingly.  So much of the first 10 minutes of this is packed with some of the most hideous CG work done in some time.  Now thankfully most of the gore and Critters themselves are practical, but even then the puppet work can be super cheap looking.  There's one scene in particular where you can clearly see the arm of the puppeteer that it's one of the Critters.  The whole cheapness of the production is really distracting and brings down the whole show so much.

 These guys know how to have fun.

The highlight of these movies has always been the Critters themselves, and not because they are scary, but because they are pretty fun little guys.  They are like Gremlins who want to eat your flesh and party.  Since the 2nd film especially they really went with a less serious tone to the franchise.  A New Binge goes all out with pushing the comedy aspect and for the most part it's great.  The Critters in this get all kinds of snazzy outfits, make jokes, and do all kinds of goofy things.  The Critters themselves help salvage this mess as they are always entertaining when on the screen, and whenever the humans are front and center, the entertainment value of the show plummets.  As a horror film, this has to be the tamest of entries of the franchise even though it does have large amounts of gore, it's still mostly a comedy.  Now the humans of the series... much yikes.  What you have is the most trope filled cast and setting, where our nerdy fat hero is your normal high school loser.  Of course he has a crush on a hot girl in school who also happens to have a jock boyfriend who is a total bully to our main cast.  We've all seen this movie a million times, and it doesn't help with how unlikable everyone is, and not to mention the piss poor acting.  Bad teen humor, trying to impress the girl, while avoiding the school bully, oh how unique!  You just want the crites to come eat everyone as soon as possible.

Told you they like to have fun

The series is faithful to the franchise including some of the lore previously introduced and it even kind of alludes to being part of the other movies as it constantly refers back to unspecified events in the 80's.  So this is presented as a sort of modern sequel though it's still left a bit vague either way.  Like our previous entries besides the Critters we also have a race of shape shifting alien bounty hunters who are set on hunting down the Crites.  It's nice to see them reuse the old concepts but the bounty hunters just also present more opportunities for the show to use it's non-existent special effects budget.  The show is so all over the place as it can be campy fun, but there is so many poor choices made and the cheapness of the whole thing really hurts one's enjoyment of this.  Low budget camp is one thing, but this is bottom of the barrel visuals.

The story itself is a pretty simple one where the Critters are sent to Earth to seek out and capture the main teenage character.  The Critters detective work and adventures in tracking their human prey can be pretty hilarious and some human get eaten along the way of course.  As the show moves along they start introducing some twists on exactly whats going on with why a boy is being hunted by the Crites, and the whole payoff is quite something.  They go all out with absurdity in the story, and the big twist is obviously played for laughs but they drag it out so much that it's one of those things that you feel embarrassed to be watching.  Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to be spoiled!  So our lead's mom got drunk at a party in the 80's and banged the president of the crites.  Our main tubby hero is half crite and the crites want him for he is a miracle of crite evolution or some nonsense.  To make matters worse, our teen starts turning into some weird werecrite thing with back spines, random glued on hair splotches, red eyes, and sharp crite teeth.  He takes off half his shirt for some reason too, which of course is an attractive look with a big fat gut hanging out and bouncing about as he runs all over the place.  Oh he also gets a cape, cause why the hell not.  The boy joins the crites and leads an army of them in a bid to save them from the alien bounty hunters which leads into a shitty little war in a park between all the races during a hot dog eating contest.  It's awful.

 I agree!

I was excited for some new Critters finally but this was a giant mess.  It's a quick binge to watch (get it?), but the production values really are painful to deal with and as I outlined the story gets more and more cheesy and hard to swallow the further along it goes.  The whole thing is incredibly corny and it's rarely serious, whereas the original movies still were horror films that knew how to have some lighthearted fun moments.  I would never recommend this to anyone, and if you need some more Critters in your life, maybe checkout the reboot movie coming in a few months that looks a bit more serious.  This one's a total dud.