Imprinted in My Psyche’: Why Gremlins 2: The New Batch Is My Feelgood Movie

“Well, it’s rather brutal here. Our recommendation is all of our clients to commit their entire holdings into canned food and shotguns.” This nugget of sage advice comes from the Brain Gremlin – a scientifically altered, articulate, spectacled member of the oozy monster mob that swarms Manhattan’s high-tech Clamp Tower skyscraper in helmer Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. On the surface, it’s merely an investment tip from one monster to another. However, curiously, it’s also pretty solid existential counsel. Truly, consider my perspective.

When things go bad, the biggest mistake you can do is take things too seriously. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. Actually, most of the fang-bearing creatures that occupy Dante’s chaotic 1990 feature (arguably his best) possess the same wry, meta comic sensibility regarding the blurry line separating the mundane and unadulterated chaos. It’s a single component of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that maintains my loyalty – and with the passage of time, it’s the message that resonates the most.

An Early Life Fascination

Of course, my attachment to this movie did not begin on such an introspective level. As a child, we only had a few well-worn videocassettes at home. Included within that collection were Gremlins and its follow-up, the latter housed in a chunky ex-rental box likely purchased from an independent video outlet and boasting grimacing beasts on its tattered front. I was immediately enamoured and these films did not delay inserting themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. After that point, they became an almost-daily part of my youthful watching schedule.

Dante’s first film typically gets all the accolades, thanks primarily due to its legacy as a semi-scary seasonal fave – and let me be clear, I’ve watched Gremlins more times than I can count. However, its sequel rarely gets the same level of high regard, which feels criminal. As a kid, I’d invariably jump at the prospect to watch Gremlins 2. During sunny school summer breaks, I’d seclude myself indoors and stick it on. When I obtained my very own TV-VHS combo unit, it stayed in constant rotation in my bedroom. Gradually, it ingrained itself in my mindset. If my parents detected this preoccupation, they didn’t seem to mind.

Subtler Discoveries and Societal Easter Eggs

As I got older, new revelations enhanced multiple watches, elevating the fun of watching little green monsters joyously wreck a New York high-rise. I learned the ahead-of-its-time development mogul and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was modeled closely on the later-to-be-president Donald Trump, with his ginger staff member Marla (Haviland Morris) echoing his one-time partner Marla Maples. Luckily, Clamp has more heart than his real-life counterpart.

The “end of civilisation” video Clamp plays during peak-Gremlin chaos? I discovered it was based on a actual “Doomsday” video commissioned by the CNN boss Ted Turner as a contingency for the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante took extra pains to film alternate cuts of a self-referential segment where Gremlins seize control of the very film you’re watching. A version for theaters, another for home video and television, each offering a winking bit of self-referential entertainment sorcery before the term was even a thing.

A Lasting Influence

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s gloriously nasty-looking creatures that caught my eye as a child, this deeper gold maintained my fascination as an adult. Ultimately, I even spoke to Dante about it myself and he had no reservations revealing to me he made the movie with the express purpose of mocking those who loved its absurd-yet-genuine predecessor and craved further installments. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This cartoonish insubordination and resolve to not take his sequel as seriously as his Warner Bros bosses evidently expected, only increased my affection for it.

When I experienced a unexpected loss in the family earlier this year, I was taken aback to discover that, during my heightest mourning, all I felt compelled to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Odd, no? Perhaps not. The comforting familiarity it provided was essential to thin out my mind’s sadness sludge – but the insights it had bestowed upon me as an adult were just as useful.

Like Gremlins running amok in a genetics laboratory, there’s some things in life you just can’t control. Dante knows it. The Brain Gremlin shares this wisdom. Sometimes, you have to emulate them: accept the turmoil, invest all your resources into tinned provisions and hunting rifles and try not to approach life with excessive gravity.

It’s powerful existential guidance from a most improbable origin – and it’s why Gremlins 2: The New Batch will always be my feelgood film.