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“Well, conditions are quite harsh here. The guidance we offer all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.” This nugget of sage advice comes from the Brain Gremlin – a genetically modified, articulate, bespectacled member of the slick creature crowd that overruns Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Superficially, it’s nothing more than an financial suggestion from one monster to another. Yet, oddly enough, it’s also remarkably sound life guidance. Honestly, listen to my reasoning.

When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin understands this. Indeed, most of the fang-bearing creatures that inhabit Dante’s wild 1990 film (debateably his greatest) possess the same sly, self-aware funny bone regarding the blurry line separating daily routine and pure pandemonium. It’s a single component of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that keeps me coming back – and the older I get, it’s the message that echoes the loudest.

A Youthful Fascination

Understandably, my fondness for this movie did not begin on such an deeply thoughtful note. Growing up, we were limited to 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 almost certainly acquired from an non-chain rental store and sporting grimacing beasts on its knackered cover. I was immediately enamoured and these films did not delay inserting themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. Henceforth, they became an near-everyday part of my childhood viewing routine.

Dante’s original usually receives all the plaudits, thanks primarily due to its reputation as a moderately spooky festive favorite – and to be fair, I’ve watched Gremlins on countless occasions. That said, its follow-up rarely gets the same level of lofty appreciation, which feels a travesty. As a kid, I’d invariably jump at the prospect to watch Gremlins 2. During sunny school summer breaks, I’d lock myself inside and pop it in. When I got my own TV-VHS combo unit, it remained on repeat in my bedroom. With repetition, it etched itself permanently in my psyche. If my parents observed this fixation, they didn’t seem to mind.

Subtler Rewards and Cultural Easter Eggs

As I grew, new insights enriched repeat viewings, heightening the enjoyment of watching little green monsters joyously wreck a New York high-rise. I learned the ahead-of-its-time property magnate and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was based squarely upon future president Donald Trump, with his auburn-haired worker Marla (Haviland Morris) alluding to his former spouse Marla Maples. Luckily, Clamp has more heart than his actual-world equivalent.

The “apocalyptic” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was inspired by a actual “Doomsday” video commissioned by the CNN boss Ted Turner in case the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante went out of his way to film alternate cuts of a self-referential segment where Gremlins seize control of the very film you’re watching. One for cinemas, a separate one for tape and broadcast, each offering a winking bit of self-referential entertainment sorcery prior to the concept being mainstream.

A Persistent Appeal

While it was makeup maestro Rick Baker’s wonderfully grotesque creatures that drew my gaze as a child, this subsurface richness maintained my fascination as an adult. Eventually, I even spoke to Dante about it myself and he had no hesitation revealing to me he made the movie with the direct intention of mocking those who loved its silly-yet-sincere predecessor and desired a sequel. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This cartoonish insubordination and commitment to not take his sequel as solemnly as his Warner Bros bosses clearly wanted him to, only deepened my appreciation further.

When I experienced a sudden family bereavement recently, I was surprised to find that, during my heightest mourning, all I wanted to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Weird, right? Perhaps not. The comforting familiarity it furnished was essential to thin out my mind’s sadness sludge – but the insights it had given me as an adult were equally valuable.

Like Gremlins tearing apart a genetics laboratory, there’s particular aspects in life you just cannot manage. Dante knows it. The Brain Gremlin knows it too. Sometimes, you have to be like them: welcome the pandemonium, commit your entire being into tinned provisions and hunting rifles and try not to view the world with undue solemnity.

It’s powerful existential guidance from a most improbable origin – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will always be my comfort movie.