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.

Like all series that run out of fresh ideas, let's toss it into a space future. The year is 2045 in a spaceship near Saturn. They encounter the last two eggs in a space pod with Charlie (Don Keith Opper) who has appeared in all four films. The special effects weren't special unless you mean it in a derogatory sense. The acting has digressed as did the script. Perhaps the weakest of the four.

Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex. Rear nudity ("The" Angela Bassett)

Or can there ever be enough of it? Actually this is quite restricted and due to the fact this was shot back to back with Critters 3 with a combined budget that didn't even reach the heights of the one they had for the first one (more on that on the documentaries and audio commentaries),this has quite decent production values overall.

Not to mention a cast that really is quite good if you think about it. Brad Dourif and Angela Bassett - I mean come on? Also we have the returning "Bounty Hunters". Sort of, but you'll see for yourself. And yes they are a bit weird to say the least. But with all the restrictions in place, this really is decent. If you have a heart for the critters - don't feed it to them. I mean you'll have fun watching this - though not as much fun as with the others, because "finally" the Critters went dark. A little bit at least, because they still got the PG-13 rating ... go figure