From writers and executive producers Jordan Rubin (who also directed the episodes) and Al and Jon Kaplan, the deadly hairy balls known as Crites are back in Critters: A New Binge (available to stream at Shudder), having returned to Earth to search for one of their kind who was left behind. Upon landing in Burbank, Calif., they immediately start to wreak havoc among a group of high schoolers and their families, while consuming as much flesh as they can.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, filmmaker Jordan Rubin talked about how this series evolved, why he thinks Critters is having such a resurgence right now, what he appreciates about the original film, how they approached the gore and language of the series, working with the practical puppets, his favorite moments to shoot, and whether there could be more episodes.

Be aware that some spoilers are discussed.

Collider:  Thank you for talking to me about Critters. It seems like as good a day as any to talk about scary hairy balls.

JORDAN RUBIN:  Yeah, it seems like the right time.

How did this opportunity come about? Was it something that you were seeking out, or did someone approach you about doing it?

RUBIN:  The people at Warner Bros. Digital reached out to me. There’s a producer there named Peter Girardi, who I had worked with, years ago, when I was a writer on Crank Yankers, this Comedy Central Jimmy Kimmel prank call puppet show. And then, I had gone on to become a director, and he’d gone on to Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Digital and Blue Ribbon Content. So, he reached out because he knew that I’d directed Zombeavers and he was like, “Is this something that you might be interested in?” And I said, “Yeah, for sure.” And then, my writing partners – Jon and Al Kaplan – and I wrote a little outline pitch of what we wanted to do with the franchise, in series form, and they loved it, so we went from there.

Along with this series, Syfy is also doing a Critters film. Why do you think that there’s such a resurgence, right now?

RUBIN:  I don’t know. I have this theory that there’s not a lot of mid-range budget stuff going on, or not as much as it used to be. There are these big, tent pole franchises with CG, that are $200 to $300 million movies, and then there are these very small movies. Now, there’s this space, because of all the digital outlets for the in-between genre films, to have a little bit more weight than they’ve had for a bunch of years. I also think that the nostalgia is back. Certain things have opened the doors, like Stranger Things and all of these reboots, like Evil Dead and Halloween, so I think there’s just this resurgence. I think Critters had a sleeper cell fan base that got activated once we announced this and started prep on this series. I didn’t know how big it was, and I think it’s possible that some of the marketing people might have found it surprising, how big of a following Critters has. It’s possible that’s some of the reason. When we look on some of the socials, it’s interesting to see how many groups there are. There are Facebook groups, and fans doing fan art and building their own puppets. I think maybe they just tapped into something. And everyone seems to love a reboot, right?

When did you first see the original Critters film, and what was your reaction to it?

RUBIN:  To be honest, I remember seeing it when I was young, but it not making that much of an impact on me. I was such a Gremlins-head, at the time, and I felt like there wasn’t as much personality to these guys and it was a bit darker. Maybe early on, I was reacting to it being a bit of a bigger budget. I don’t know. I was such a fan of the relationships and the realistic portrayals of a human interacting with Gremlins, so Critters didn’t make that much of an impact. But then, when they reached out to me, to possibly work on this, I revisited it and fell in love with the concept of it and the fun lo-fi of it. I come from a background in comedy, so I definitely wanted to escalate it and put a bit of a twist in, and make it have more laughs.

There’s definitely some crazy shit that goes on in this show, and in only the way that it can on a Critters TV series. It also seems like you had some freedom with gore and language, but you don’t overuse it. What did you use to gauge just how far to go, and was it nice to be able to throw in a “fuck,” when you needed it?

RUBIN:  I don’t know. It was just a tone. We wrote it, and then as we were shooting it, there were times when I could have gone that way, but I tried to calibrate it. There were certain things where I pulled back, here and there, in the edit. I also shot practically, so there was the amount of time that we could use certain set-ups and not go too gory. I leaned heavily into the comedy of these guys talking. There’s so much more subtitles in this than there was in the original franchise, if I remember correctly. Personifying them made it so much funnier to me, to have them be diabolical, and still do due diligence to the original franchise and pay homage to that, but also escalate it and have them personified with dilemmas, and trying to work things out with dialogue, and not just every other shot shooting and exploding things. I had a lot of fun shooting the Tom Lennon scenes. We only had him for a day, and we shot so much stuff with him. I wanted to get creative and invent more things, besides just the gore. And then, in terms of the language, it just didn’t feel like it always needed it. When they had to say it, it was funny. Gilbert Gottfried just started going on this riff about his penis, at one point, and I was like, “Okay, let’s keep going with that.” Joey [Morgan], the actor who plays Chris, couldn’t keep a straight face because he was laughing so hard. I don’t know if Joey really knew of Gilbert ‘cause he’s so young, or if he knew just how funny and how much of a legend he is. Gilbert shows up on set, and he’s just so soft-spoken and sweet, and to Joey, or anyone there, I’m sure he just looks like this little old man, sitting there and having some tea very quietly. And then, he was doing the lines that were required of him and I was like, “Wait, hold on a second, this isn’t the Gilbert that I know. Come on! Why don’t we keep going?” Then, he mentioned something about a penis, and I said, “Keep talking about that,” so he just went off on this riff, like an insane person. The cameras were shaking ‘cause the people holding them were laughing so hard.

What was it like to work with the practical puppets? How many were animatronic versus how many were puppets, how many back-ups did you have to have, and did you have to do a lot of repairs?

RUBIN:  We had to do constant repairs. You have two or three puppeteers on set, at any given time, and two in the trailer, fixing them and prepping them for the next thing. It was intense because they were more like actors that had to have their outfits on correctly, and they were standing and talking and gesturing. When I did Zombeavers, they were just these flat rodents. They almost feel like they were 2D because they were on the ground, occasionally doing something. They couldn’t really run, or do anything like that. I wanted to have these guys walking over to talk to someone, thinking, being wistful, arguing, and doing more than just attacking. I wanted to actually get into the Jim Henson of it all and really puppeteer them, have dialogue, and feel like they’re standing in a way that someone who is saying the things they are saying would stand. That was very difficult, but it was fun. We did little tricks, like you could swap out certain puppets. You’ve got Communications Crite, which has the telemarketer headset on. If we were already in position, and then we had to very quickly do something with Pilot Crite, you technically could just take off the headset, put on the Amelia Earhart scarf and goggles, and then, your pilot Crite is there, as opposed to going all the way back to the trailer and getting pilot Crite ready. If it was a quick thing, where you could swap them out like a Mr. Potato Head, that helped a lot. And then, it was fun to just see everything we did come to life. I asked Stephen Merchant to do the voice of the President, and he was nice enough to do it. It was hilarious to, all of a sudden, have Stephen Merchant’s voice coming out of the President.

What went into deciding how the human/Critter hybrid would look? Did you go through variations of how extreme to make it? How did you end up with the final look for him?

RUBIN:  It was a combination of me pitching ideas and the guys at SFX, which is a special effects company, pitching ideas and doing prosthetics in ways that would be believable, but also that the actor could put on and not be in too much pain with. We didn’t want to go full Teen Wolf, with hair everywhere, but we wanted to have enough. Joey Morgan, who plays Chris, was such a trooper. He would leave the contacts in at lunch. It was a collaborative process with the special effects team, who is awesome. We’d do rudimentary drawings and email them, back and forth, before I got to Vancouver. And then, once I got up there, we did the testing on Joey. They did such a great job.

When you do a show that’s this wild and has this many crazy things going on, what was your absolute favorite moment to shoot?

RUBIN:  That’s a good question. I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been looking back at old photos that we shot this summer. I tend to remember the things that we didn’t even write, but that I think of last minute, and then, all of a sudden, it feels like the magic of Hollywood, with a bunch of people working together and finding a way to do it. Sometimes it’s the littlest things, that don’t sound interesting to people, like the second to last scene, with those remaining Crites that are on the ship, discussing what they are gonna do. That was a game-time decision, last minute. We had about 20 minutes to wrap that scene, however we were gonna do it. It was supposed to be Critters talking to each other and I was like, “Let’s build a circular dolly and shoot it like the Reservoir Dogs scene at the coffee shop, where they’re spinning the camera around while they’re all talking.” So, we rushed and got it together, and we had to time it so that we would see each of their mouths when they were saying their lines. I was like, “Let’s just roll it, and we’ll go until we get shut down because we can’t go into overtime today.” Luckily, I caught enough of the mouths of each character to keep the camera moving in the same direction. That made me laugh so hard. I loved doing The Matrix homage with the lunch tray, which took a lunch tray on a green pole that we had to remove. We were shooting at a high frame rate, in slow motion, but then also had to have Tom completely frozen, after he threw the tray because we weren’t really shooting real bullet time, where you need 25 cameras. We were faking it, and we were able to fake it by having frozen things within a frame, while other things were moving in slow motion, so that it seemed like time was distorted. It was also a last-minute decision to have the puppets outside the diner crawl up each other to make a Critter pyramid or Critter totem pole. Stuff like that was fun to shoot. I love the comedy stuff, and I love going off script. I come from a comedy background, so I just love shooting stuff where we play with some improv. That stuff was great. And seeing the Critter ball and shooting that was just completely bonkers, with how much money and time went into making that thing, just to see it in the movie for a total of a minute, maybe. God, that thing was just gigantic.

The end of the season sets things up for Phase 2, so when will we get to see that? Are you planning more episodes for another season?

RUBIN:  My writing partners and I have been talking about ideas, loosely, and we’d love to do another season, if the fans and Warner Bros. and Shudder will have us. We left it as a cliffhanger, so there could be a Season 2. I’m assuming that they want to see how it does before anyone commits, or maybe they hired someone else and they’re already shooting. No, I’m just kidding. I’d be psyched to do more, and hopefully soon ‘cause I loved working with all of the actors up in Vancouver, and loved shooting there. Zombeavers was great, and I loved the experience. It was my first movie. But there’s something different about the standing puppets whose mouths actually move, and they’re fully animatronic, and they’re expressing themselves. It’s so funny, the things that you can do, like have them smoke a cigarette. It’s just ridiculous.

Critters: A New Binge is available to stream at Shudder.