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“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.” This piece of wise counsel comes from the Brain Gremlin – a lab-engineered, articulate, glasses-wearing member of the slick creature crowd that infests Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in helmer Joe Dante’s madcap sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. On the surface, it’s simply an portfolio pointer from one monster to another. However, curiously, it’s also remarkably sound existential counsel. Honestly, listen to my reasoning.

When life takes a turn for the worse, the worst thing you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin comprehends this. Actually, the majority of the fang-bearing creatures that populate Dante’s unrestrained 1990 movie (arguably his best) possess the same sly, self-aware comic sensibility regarding the hazy boundary separating everyday life and absolute bedlam. It’s a single component of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that ensures my return – and with the passage of time, it’s the underlying idea that resonates the most.

A Youthful Fixation

Understandably, my connection with this movie didn’t start on such an introspective level. As a child, we only had a few well-worn videocassettes at home. Among them were Gremlins and its follow-up, the latter housed in a thick former-rental sleeve almost certainly acquired from an off-brand video shop and featuring growling monsters on its worn-out artwork. I was immediately enamoured and these films quickly proceeded embedding themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. Henceforth, they became an almost-daily part of my childhood viewing routine.

Dante’s initial installment commonly garners all the praise, thanks largely to its legacy as a partly frightening holiday classic – and let me be clear, I’ve watched Gremlins more times than I can count. However, its successor rarely gets the same level of elevated esteem, which feels criminal. As a kid, I’d never miss an opportunity to watch Gremlins 2. During long summer holidays, I’d lock myself inside and stick it on. 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 gave no indication of concern.

Subtler Delights and Pop-Culture References

As I grew, new understandings enriched multiple watches, elevating the fun of watching diminutive verdant beasts 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) alluding to his second wife Marla Maples. Thankfully, Clamp demonstrates more humanity than his genuine article inspiration.

The “doomsday” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was inspired by a genuine “Doomsday” video created by the CNN boss Ted Turner in case the world actually met its demise. I noticed how Dante made a special effort to film different iterations of a meta sequence where Gremlins hijack the actual feature in progress. An edit for movie houses, one for VHS and TV, each providing a grinning portion of self-referential entertainment sorcery prior to the concept being mainstream.

A Persistent Legacy

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s fantastically vile creatures that drew my gaze as a child, this deeper gold kept me hooked as an adult. Eventually, I even conversed with Dante about it myself and he had no reservations revealing to me he made the movie with the specific aim of poking fun at 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 happily revealed. This cartoonish defiance and commitment to not take his sequel as gravely as his Warner Bros bosses obviously desired, only increased my affection for it.

When I experienced a unexpected loss in the family earlier this year, I was astonished to realize that, during my most profound sorrow, all I felt compelled to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Weird, right? Maybe not. The soothing reminiscence it furnished was needed to thin out my mind’s grief morass – but the perspectives it had imparted to me as an adult were just as useful.

Like Gremlins running amok in a genetics laboratory, there’s certain elements in life you just cannot manage. Dante knows it. The Brain Gremlin knows it too. Sometimes, you have to be like them: embrace the chaos, 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 highly unexpected fountain – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will eternally stand as my go-to cinematic solace.