Dee Wallace

Critters (1986)

Critters (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) In the mid-1980s, you couldn’t swing a bag of popcorn without spilling some on high-concept horror movies that ended up spawning multiple sequels. As one such horror/Science Fiction hybrid, Critters starts out being a bit more ambitious than your usual creature feature, what with intergalactic bounty hunters hunting down tribbles carnivorous pests so that they don’t take over the world. But budgetary constraints quickly show up, as most of the action takes place in a Kansas farmhouse. While there are a few familiar names in the credits (Lin Shaye, Dee Wallace, M. Emmet Walsh), the most distinctive thing about Critters is its lack of distinction. If you’re looking for the median 1980s horror monster film with practical creature effects, this may be the one: not too depressing, not too funny, not too impressive but not too cheap either. The science fiction aspect does add a bit to it, but it’s a wonder as to why there were so many sequels. Oh well—you can do worse than watching the first one.

Cujo (1983)

Cujo (1983)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2017) While Cujo is not a bad movie in itself, it’s frustrating in that it misses being a much better movie by inches. The central conceit of the film is simple enough: a mom and her ailing son, trapped in a dilapidated car in the middle of nowhere by a rabid dog ready to tear them apart. It’s a powerful claustrophobic conceit, and recent movies such as Vehicle 19, Buried or Locke show that it’s possible to tell a full story under severe location restraints. But Cujo, coming from 1983, is too traditional to think about locking characters in a single location for 90 minutes: adapting Stephen King’s book as conventionally as possible, much of the film’s first half feels like one big prologue as we’re laboriously introduced to the characters, the setting, the situation and the dog. Anyone who knows anything about the film’s premise can be forgiven from feeling as if this is all a waste of time. It’s when all the elements are finally assembled and the action becomes constrained to the car (not air-conditioned, in heat-wave conditions) that the film finally clicks into higher gear. A good just-this-side-of-hysteria performance from Dee Wallace helps, even when the film does push things a bit too far during its overwrought climax. But much of it feels too little too late. While Cujo definitely remains watchable, it does feel half-hearted from today’s perspective.