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“Well, it’s rather brutal here. Our recommendation is all of our clients to invest all their resources into preserved goods and firearms.” This piece of wise counsel comes from the Brain Gremlin – a scientifically altered, articulate, spectacled member of the oozy monster mob that infests Manhattan’s high-tech Clamp Tower skyscraper in filmmaker Joe Dante’s unhinged continuation Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Superficially, it’s simply an financial suggestion from one monster to another. But, oddly enough, it’s also remarkably sound existential counsel. Honestly, hear me out.

When things go bad, the biggest mistake you can do is view events with undue solemnity. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. Indeed, the majority of the fang-bearing creatures that inhabit Dante’s wild 1990 film (arguably his best) possess the same wry, meta comic sensibility regarding the indistinct border separating everyday life and absolute bedlam. It’s a particular aspect of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that ensures my return – and as I age, it’s the underlying idea that echoes the loudest.

An Early Life Obsession

Of course, my connection with this movie wasn’t born on such an introspective level. As a child, we only had a few battered VHS tapes at home. Among them were Gremlins and its second chapter, the latter housed in a thick former-rental sleeve almost certainly acquired from an independent video outlet and featuring growling monsters on its knackered cover. I was right away smitten and these films quickly proceeded lodging themselves inside my small, malleable brain. Henceforth, they became an almost-daily part of my early years entertainment regimen.

Dante’s initial installment usually receives all the praise, thanks primarily due to its reputation as a partly frightening holiday classic – and don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched Gremlins an incalculable number of times. Nevertheless, its follow-up infrequently obtains the same level of high regard, which feels a travesty. As a kid, I’d always seize the chance to watch Gremlins 2. During bright summer vacations, I’d lock myself inside and pop it in. When I obtained my very own TV-VHS combo unit, it continued playing looped in my bedroom. With repetition, it ingrained itself in my mindset. If my parents observed this fixation, they didn’t seem to mind.

Hidden Delights and Cultural Nuggets

As I grew, new insights enhanced frequent screenings, amplifying the pleasure of watching diminutive verdant beasts happily vandalize a New York high-rise. I learned the ahead-of-its-time development mogul and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was based squarely upon future president Donald Trump, with his red-headed employee Marla (Haviland Morris) echoing his former spouse Marla Maples. Luckily, Clamp demonstrates more humanity than his real-life counterpart.

The “doomsday” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was modeled after a real-life “Doomsday” video created by the CNN boss Ted Turner as a contingency for the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante went out of his way to film different iterations of a self-aware scene where Gremlins take over the exact movie you are viewing. A version for theaters, another for home video and television, each offering a winking bit of self-referential entertainment sorcery prior to the concept being mainstream.

A Persistent Influence

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s gloriously nasty-looking creatures that captured my attention as a child, this subsurface richness maintained my fascination 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 silly-yet-sincere predecessor and craved further installments. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This Looney Tunes-esque rebelliousness and resolve to not take his sequel as gravely as his Warner Bros bosses evidently expected, only made me love it even more.

When I experienced a unexpected loss in the family earlier this year, I was taken aback to discover that, during my deepest grief, all I felt compelled to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Weird, right? Perhaps not. The soothing reminiscence it provided was essential to weaken my mind’s grief morass – but the perspectives it had given me as an adult were equally valuable.

Like Gremlins rampaging through a genetics laboratory, there’s particular aspects in life you just can’t control. Dante knows 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 view the world with undue solemnity.

It’s powerful existential guidance from a very unlikely source – and it’s why Gremlins 2: The New Batch will forever remain my go-to cinematic solace.