“Ghoulies” is allegedly a horror comedy but it is definitely awful. I enjoyed the “Gremlins” films and the first “Critters” picture was enjoyable so I went into this hoping for something good but what I got was absolutely atrocious.

There is no real plot in “Ghoulies” as it involves a man by the name of Jonathan (Peter Liapis) inheriting an old spooky house and begins trying to carry out pagan/satanic rituals in order to command demonic creatures. The creatures show up, a few people die and then we get an ending that makes no sense whatsoever and it has one of those cheesy cliffhanger endings that horror movies specialise in.

The acting in “Ghoulies” is among the worst I’ve ever seen in a movie. The actors somehow seem like they were more bored delivering their lines than I was watching this movie. Many of the characters wear sunglasses in many of the scenes, this was apparently because the film was going to have parts filmed in 3D and the audience could wear their 3D glasses when the characters were wearing sunglasses… it’s a stupid idea. The creatures that appear are really cheap and nasty and they lack any form of personality. If you remember the “Gremlins” movies, you’ll remember how individual many of the Gremlins were but here, they look terrible and do next to nothing.

There is nothing redeeming about “Ghoulies” as it isn’t even laughably bad in the way that films such as “Robot Monster” are. The dialog is awful, the monsters look poor, the plot is virtually non-existent, the attempted comedy is dreadful and the overall film is shockingly bad. What’s even more frightening is that there are sequels to this movie but I assume that they must be better than this because you have to be trying quite hard to make a film more painful than this.