Horror Movie Review: Night Crawlers (1996)

John Polonia and Mark Polonia are famous for a lot of reasons. Most of all for their bad movies either as directors, writers or actors. We’ve had the displeasure of seeing a couple of their films recently such as Feeders, Feeders 2: Slay Bells and now Night Crawlers.

Night Crawlers was released in 1996. The same year as Feeders and shares so much in common with that movie. It is also a zero-budget shot-on-video horror film with few actors who couldn’t act if a gun was pressed to their heads.

It stars Mark Polonia as Tom, a schmuck who just wants to make life better for wife, May (Maria Russo). One such way is for Tom to buy a house for them to live in. Which he finds in a small town in Utah. The house is fantastic but suspiciously inexpensive and the agent really seems to want to offload it so Tom and May have their house!

Not long after moving in they and some of the other locals are attacked by underground creatures. It’s a toss-up between what looks worse. The aliens from Feeders or these paper-mâché creatures with stuck on eyes. They look so bad that it’s kind of hilarious.

Or at least it would be if Night Crawlers wasn’t so mind-numbingly boring. It’s barely an hour long but it feels double that. Thanks to the cast who struggle to say even basic dialogue convincingly. Characters and development? Are you joking!?

A lengthy explanation by the creatures in a unintelligible voice of why they exist is as much plot development as you’re going to get here. They are from another planet and have lived on Earth for centuries. Is this supposed to be a twist?

The question isn’t if Night Crawlers has any redeeming factors because after 5 minutes of watching it, it’s clear it doesn’t. The fake blood looks horrible. The creature effects are worse and there is even some computer graphics that somehow turn out to look the worst of all. No, the question is if Night Crawlers is better or worse than Feeders.

It’s close, really close but Night Crawlers can proudly hold its head high by not being quite as bad. It’s still utterly horrendous though.