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“Well, conditions are quite harsh here. We’re advising all of our clients to commit their entire holdings into tinned provisions and hunting rifles.” That bit of shrewd guidance comes from the Brain Gremlin – a lab-engineered, articulate, glasses-wearing member of the slimy Gremlin horde that swarms Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in filmmaker Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. At first glance, it’s nothing more than an financial suggestion from one monster to another. Yet, curiously, it’s also pretty solid life guidance. Truly, listen to my reasoning.

When situations deteriorate, the biggest mistake you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin understands this. In fact, the majority of the dentally-gifted beasts that occupy Dante’s wild 1990 film (debateably his greatest) possess the same knowing, self-referential sense of humour regarding the indistinct border separating daily routine and absolute bedlam. It’s a single component of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that keeps me coming back – and as I age, it’s the theme that strikes the deepest chord.

A Childhood Obsession

Naturally, my fondness for this movie did not begin on such an philosophical plane. In my youth, we possessed merely a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Among them were Gremlins and its second chapter, the latter housed in a thick former-rental sleeve likely purchased from an non-chain rental store and featuring snarling creatures on its knackered cover. I was immediately enamoured and these films did not delay lodging themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. After that point, they became an almost-daily part of my childhood viewing routine.

Dante’s initial installment commonly garners all the praise, thanks primarily due to its reputation as a partly frightening holiday classic – and let me be clear, I’ve watched Gremlins on countless occasions. However, its successor rarely gets the same level of high regard, which feels a travesty. As a kid, I’d never miss an opportunity to watch Gremlins 2. During bright summer vacations, I’d lock myself inside and pop it in. When I got my own TV-VHS combo unit, it continued playing looped in my bedroom. Over time, it became deeply rooted in my mental framework. If my parents observed this fixation, they appeared unbothered.

Subtler Rewards and Pop-Culture Nuggets

As I got older, new understandings enhanced frequent screenings, amplifying the pleasure of watching diminutive verdant beasts happily vandalize a New York high-rise. I learned the future-focused property magnate and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was modeled closely on the later-to-be-president Donald Trump, with his auburn-haired worker Marla (Haviland Morris) alluding to his former spouse Marla Maples. Thankfully, Clamp has more heart than his genuine article inspiration.

The “apocalyptic” video Clamp plays during peak-Gremlin chaos? I discovered it was modeled after a real-life “Doomsday” video commissioned by the CNN boss Ted Turner as a contingency for the world really ended. I noticed how Dante went out of his way to film varying versions of a meta sequence where Gremlins hijack the exact movie you are viewing. An edit for movie houses, one for VHS and TV, each providing a grinning portion of meta pop-culture magic prior to the concept being mainstream.

A Lasting Appeal

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s gloriously nasty-looking creatures that captured my attention as a child, this deeper gold kept me hooked as an adult. In time, I even interviewed Dante about it myself and he had no qualms revealing to me he made the movie with the express purpose of ridiculing those who loved its goofy-but-heartfelt predecessor and craved further installments. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he happily revealed. This cartoonish defiance and resolve to not take his sequel as solemnly as his Warner Bros bosses clearly wanted him to, only made me love it even more.

When I experienced a unexpected loss in the family recently, 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. Weird, right? Possibly not. The soothing reminiscence it provided was necessary to weaken my mind’s sadness sludge – but the perspectives it had imparted to me as an adult were just as useful.

Like Gremlins rampaging through a genetics laboratory, there’s some things in life you just are powerless over. Dante is aware of it. The Brain Gremlin knows it too. Sometimes, you have to be like them: welcome the pandemonium, commit your entire being into canned food and shotguns and try not to take things too seriously.

It’s powerful existential guidance from a highly unexpected fountain – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will forever remain my comfort movie.