Angela Bassett and Brad Dourif join Leo DiCaprio in the short list of Oscar-nominated actors to have played second fiddle to the Chiodo Brothers' crap Critter hand-puppets; in this fourth outing for the voracious extraterrestrial fur-balls, Bassett and Dourif play part of the crew of a deep space salvage craft who retrieve a cryogenic pod containing the last two surviving Krite eggs (and Charlie the bounty hunter, once again played by Don Opper). When the pod is opened, the eggs hatch and the aliens go on the rampage.
Krites causing chaos in outer space could have made for a lot of fun, but rather than continue with the camp, B-movie spirit established over the first three Critters films, this effort goes for a much more sober style—something akin to Ridley Scott's Alien (but on a much lower budget).
This approach results in countless scenes of characters wandering down dark corridors littered with ducts and vents from where the toothy creatures might launch an attack, but while this might work wonders when the monsters are truly the stuff of nightmares (like H.R. Giger's genuinely terrifying xenomorph from Alien), the effect isn't anywhere near as effective when the threat is from dumb looking hedgehogs with naff glowing eyes. In the end, Critters 4 is far from scary, never funny, and ultimately very tedious.
