Who are we supposed to root for?

Rating: 10/10 (17 September 2002)

The late 70s and 80s have blessed us with bogeymen beyond count: Pinhead, Freddy, Jason, Mike Myers, Candyman... all speaking to a collective subconscious desire to watch a hapless protagonist - more often than not squeaky-clean, young, white and female - bite the dust.
Gremlins is a cinematic anomaly of their weirdest variety. Part slasher film, part parody, part Christmas movie, it turns all three of these sub-genres on their heads and manages to give us the very best they can deliver. It follows Billy Peltzer and his brand new pet Mogwai, Gizmo. Gizmo is an instantly lovable creature, semi-legally imported from China, but he comes with his very strict set of rules: do not expose him to sunlight, do not get him wet, and never, ever feed him after midnight. It doesn't take a genius to imagine where things go from here, but it did take geniuses of a kind to created what we end up witnessing.
The Gremlins themselves are wonderfully inventive, nasty little bastards, and watching them pillage their way through mid-80s suburban America is an unmitigated joy. Whether it's wreaking havoc at a local movie theater or hot-wiring traffic lights, their mischievousness makes them lovable and relatable in a sick, twisted way. As such, bar the core relationship between Gizmo and Billy, the human characters are efficiently but economically set up, enough so that we care when evil strikes, but never at the expense of the film's warped idea of fun.
It's a cult movie, but one of the highest order, made very skillfully by people who were clearly in love with every iota of the concept. Rarely has a film been so much fun.