I'm trying to understand what I just watched. I mean, this is undoubtedly terrible in every way, but it's also... kind of great? I'm not sure.
The whole thing screams low budget and at times it doesn't look much different to a student production that you might see on YouTube. The acting is very mixed and the special effects would have looked dated 30 years ago. The first episode especially makes these issues extremely clear with some awful quality greenscreening and amateur CG visuals.
And yet, this web series knows what it is. It fully embraces its cheapness and decides to have fun. Of all things, the writing is actually fairly good, even hilarious at points. It feels like the people behind this had a lot of affection for the original Critters series and wanted to make something that could stand with them. They obviously didn't have the resources for that, so they were forced to do what they could.
From a story point-of-view, this is surprising. It goes into some new territory and does so with a smile on its face. The first few episodes don't suggest just where this is going to go (and their low quality in comparison to what comes later is a bit of a stumbling block). One of the biggest changes is that the Crites are far more intelligent here than the ones we saw in the films, and I ended up really liking that. They are the stars of the series and are given a lot to do, as well talking to each other a lot (via subtitles), and most of what they say is genuinely funny.
A surprise celebrity voice performance towards the end works far better than I would have expected it to.
The Crites are realised through puppetry just as they were in the movies, and they look about the same as they did back then. That is to say, kind of cheesy but also surprisingly charming. This is gorier and more adult than the film series (which mostly got away with '12' ratings here in the UK) and also a lot sillier.
I very much doubt this is going to have much of an audience given it's method of distribution, lack of publicity and extreme low budget. I think only big fans of the Critters movies will get anything out of this, and fortunately that includes me. This isn't good by any means, but damn it, I had fun.
