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“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into tinned provisions and hunting rifles.” This piece of sage advice comes from the Brain Gremlin – a scientifically altered, talking, bespectacled member of the oozy monster mob that swarms Manhattan’s ultra-modern Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. On the surface, it’s simply an financial suggestion from one monster to another. However, in a strange manner, it’s also surprisingly sturdy existential counsel. Seriously, hear me out.

When things go bad, the most counterproductive action you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. In fact, most of the dentally-gifted beasts that populate Dante’s unrestrained 1990 movie (arguably his best) possess the same wry, meta sense of humour regarding the blurry line separating the mundane 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 message that resonates the most.

An Early Life Obsession

Naturally, my attachment to this movie wasn’t born on such an introspective level. As a child, we only had a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Included within that collection were Gremlins and its follow-up, the latter housed in a chunky ex-rental box probably bought from an non-chain rental store and featuring snarling creatures on its knackered cover. I was instantly captivated and these films wasted no time lodging themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. Henceforth, they became an near-everyday part of my childhood viewing routine.

Dante’s initial installment typically gets all the accolades, thanks primarily due to its status as a moderately spooky festive favorite – and don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched Gremlins more times than I can count. Nevertheless, its follow-up seldom receives the same level of elevated esteem, which feels unjust. As a kid, I’d invariably jump at the prospect to watch Gremlins 2. During bright summer vacations, I’d lock myself inside and stick it on. When I acquired my personal TV-VHS combo unit, it continued playing looped in my bedroom. With repetition, it ingrained itself in my psyche. If my parents detected this preoccupation, they didn’t seem to mind.

Hidden Delights and Pop-Culture Nuggets

As I got older, new insights enhanced frequent screenings, amplifying the pleasure of watching small emerald creatures gleefully trash a New York high-rise. I learned the ahead-of-its-time development mogul and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was inspired directly by future president Donald Trump, with his auburn-haired worker Marla (Haviland Morris) alluding to his former spouse Marla Maples. Thankfully, Clamp demonstrates more humanity than his genuine article inspiration.

The “end of civilisation” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was modeled after a actual “Doomsday” video produced by the CNN boss Ted Turner as a contingency for the world really ended. I noticed how Dante took extra pains to film alternate cuts of a meta sequence where Gremlins hijack the actual feature in progress. A version for theaters, one for VHS and TV, each providing a grinning portion of fourth-wall-breaking cultural alchemy prior to the concept being mainstream.

A Lasting Legacy

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s fantastically vile creatures that drew my gaze as a child, this subsurface richness kept me hooked as an adult. In time, I even conversed with Dante about it myself and he had no qualms informing me he made the movie with the specific aim of poking fun at 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 gravely as his Warner Bros bosses evidently expected, only increased my affection for it.

When I experienced a unexpected loss in the family not long ago, I was astonished to realize that, during my heightest mourning, all I felt compelled to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Weird, right? Perhaps not. The comforting familiarity it furnished was essential to dilute my mind’s mourning mire – but the stuff it had bestowed upon me as an adult were similarly beneficial.

Like Gremlins tearing apart 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, put everything you’ve got into preserved goods and firearms and try not to approach life with excessive gravity.

It’s robust worldly wisdom from a very unlikely source – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will eternally stand as my feelgood film.