Clever subtext behind a seemingly simple 80's "Horror" flick.

Rating: Null/10 (17 November 2003)

I watched Gremlins for the first time when I was roughly 10 years old. Naturally, back then, I didn't see past the simple "monsters killing humans until they somehow die" theme to the movie. I watched it again today, and it was simply a pleasure. The movie is so jam-packed with symbolism it's amazing.
The movie starts off as Billy's dad (A failing inventor, that only creates havoc in Billy's house, by forcing his family to be Guinea pigs for his.."Gizmos") brings home a seemingly harmless little furry creature, from a species called "Mogwai"(Chinese for "Monster", cute huh?). The old Chinese guy(Not Asian-American, it's the 80's ;) doesn't want to sell him the Mogwai, claiming that it requires responsibility. His grandson(?) sneaks it out and sells it to Billy's dad, telling him the 3 rules he must keep to prevent things from going bad with the Mogwai. Billy's dad drops it on Billy like a hot potato, and drives off, in Christmas, mind you, to pursue yet another convention to market his gizmos.
Billy doesn't do much to keep the rules, and one cute gizmo suddenly creates a few other Mogwais. Ones that are not very cute anymore. Those evil Mogwais like technology. They especially like to use it to do bad stuff, which first means cutting off the power to Billy's digital clock, making him break the worst rule of all, and they grow into full-fledged Gremlins(A word describing a malfunction in a technological device. Etymology unknown, at least not to Webster).
The Gremlins start wreaking havoc, but almost never directly. Most of the times they are genuine Gremlins in the Machine, that cause traffic lights to go out, disable car breaks, and so on. Billy proceeds to eliminate them all when they gather in a cinema, except the big bad one, which then leads to the movie's climax: One of the irresponsible ones, trying to regain control of something that now controls him.
All in all, the movie's general message is "Your technology might one day wake up and bite you in the ass, so be vigilant". Of course, that's a very old argument, but hey, that's pretty much all the philosophical depth behind the much-celebrated sci-fi "masterpiece", The Matrix(That, along with the "What is real?" notion). Gremlins simply presented it 15 years earlier, with no Carrie-Ann Moss in tight latex.
Technically speaking the movie is well-made, with cute camera work, and the acting is perfectly fine(Not good, but I think that's due to the rather flat characters).
All in all, a good watch for those who have watched it as a kid. I hope there are no Gremlins in my ADSL modem - I'm clicking SUBMIT now :)