David Gordon Green has an unpredictable career. He’s making low-key indie dramas like All the Real Girls one minute, and the next, he’s working with Seth Rogen in stoner comedies Pineapple Express and Your Highness. Now, after a brief to detour to Boston (for the under-seen Stronger), he’s moved onto horror. Halloween, a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, is expected to make a lot of money at the box office, and Gordon Green should be flooded with offers for his next project. So, of course, he wants to bring back Critters.
During a recent Reddit AMA, the filmmaker was asked to name another subgenre he’d like to explore, besides slashers, if he makes another horror movie. “I’d like to make a little critters/ghoulies movies,” Gordon Green responded, while Halloween co-writer Danny McBride, who also participated in the discussion, added, “When I was a boy I asked my parents for Goonies for Christmas and they gave me a copy of Ghoulies, never gotten over it.”
Ghoulies, which came out in 1985, and Critters, which was released the next year (followed by three sequels, including Critters 2: The Main Course), aren’t very good, which is exactly why they’re so good. They’re often dismissed as Gremlins knock-offs, but a) both scripts were written before Gremlins went into production, and b) that’s an unfair comparison, because no movie is as good as Gremlins or especially Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Except maybe Hobgoblins.
David Gordon Green should remake that, too.