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“Well, it’s rather brutal here. The guidance we offer all of our clients to invest all their resources into canned food and shotguns.” This piece of shrewd guidance comes from the Brain Gremlin – a lab-engineered, articulate, bespectacled member of the slick creature crowd that swarms Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in filmmaker Joe Dante’s zany follow-up Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Superficially, it’s simply an investment tip from one monster to another. Yet, oddly enough, it’s also remarkably sound existential counsel. Truly, hear me out.

When life takes a turn for the worse, the biggest mistake you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. Indeed, most of the dentally-gifted beasts that occupy Dante’s chaotic 1990 feature (debateably his greatest) possess the same wry, meta comic sensibility regarding the indistinct border separating everyday life 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 resonates the most.

An Early Life Fixation

Of course, my attachment to this movie didn’t start on such an introspective level. In my youth, we were limited to a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Part of that group were Gremlins and its sequel, the latter housed in a thick former-rental sleeve almost certainly acquired from an independent video outlet and boasting growling monsters on its knackered cover. I was immediately enamoured and these films wasted no time lodging themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. From then on, they became an near-everyday part of my early years entertainment regimen.

Dante’s initial installment typically gets all the praise, thanks largely to its legacy as a moderately spooky festive favorite – and to be fair, I’ve watched Gremlins more times than I can count. That said, its follow-up infrequently obtains the same level of high regard, which feels unjust. 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 play it. When I acquired my personal TV-VHS combo unit, it continued playing looped in my bedroom. With repetition, it ingrained itself in my mental framework. If my parents detected this preoccupation, they gave no indication of concern.

Subtler Delights and Societal References

As I matured, new revelations rewarded multiple watches, amplifying the pleasure of watching little green monsters happily vandalize 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 the eventual commander-in-chief Donald Trump, with his ginger staff member Marla (Haviland Morris) echoing his second wife Marla Maples. Fortunately, Clamp demonstrates more humanity than his genuine article inspiration.

The “apocalyptic” video Clamp plays during peak-Gremlin chaos? I discovered it was inspired by a genuine “Doomsday” video created by the CNN boss Ted Turner should the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante made a special effort to film different iterations of a self-aware scene where Gremlins hijack the exact movie you are viewing. A version for theaters, a separate one for tape and broadcast, each providing a grinning portion of meta pop-culture magic ahead of its time.

A Lasting Legacy

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s fantastically vile creatures that caught my eye as a child, this subsurface richness held my interest as an adult. Ultimately, I even conversed with Dante about it myself and he had no qualms revealing to me he made the movie with the direct intention of mocking those who loved its absurd-yet-genuine predecessor and desired a sequel. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he happily revealed. This cartoonish insubordination and commitment to not take his sequel as gravely as his Warner Bros bosses clearly wanted him to, only increased my affection for it.

When I experienced a abrupt familial death earlier this year, I was taken aback to discover that, during my deepest grief, all I desired to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Weird, right? Maybe not. The soothing reminiscence it provided was essential to thin out my mind’s sadness sludge – but the insights it had bestowed upon me as an adult were similarly beneficial.

Like Gremlins tearing apart a genetics laboratory, there’s certain elements in life you just cannot manage. Dante is aware of it. The Brain Gremlin knows it too. Sometimes, you have to be like them: embrace the chaos, put everything you’ve got into preserved goods and firearms and try not to view the world with undue solemnity.

It’s robust worldly wisdom from a most improbable origin – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will eternally stand as my comfort movie.