Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

The puppetry alone is worth something. Chris Walas and his team clearly poured everything into this one, and you can see it in every frame: more expressive faces, wilder creature designs, a spider-gremlin hybrid that would have been the centrepiece of a better film, and a general sense that the animatronic work had taken a genuine leap forward since the original. If you put Gremlins 2: The New Batch next to Gremlins (1984) purely on a technical level, this one wins. No question. The effects hold up, the madness is inventive, and swapping the sleepy suburban setting for a gleaming corporate high-rise gives the whole thing a slicker, more ambitious playground.

So why does it feel so hollow?

The problem isn't that The New Batch is stupid. It knows exactly what it is. That's almost the issue. The film leans so hard into cartoonish absurdity that it stops functioning as a film and starts feeling like a theme park attraction that someone stapled a script to. Talking gremlins. A gremlin that morphs into a classic movie monster mid-scene. Characters who turn to the camera and wink at the audience. At one point, the screen goes dark, as though the projector has packed in, and the whole enterprise grinds to a halt for a meta gag. It's clever in theory. In practice, it's the moment any remaining sense of danger just quietly packs its bags and leaves.

What made the original work was a specific kind of balance. There was genuine menace underneath the mischief. You believed the town was in trouble. The horror and the comedy were pulling against each other in a way that created real tension. Here, that tension is gone from the first reel. Nothing threatens anyone in any meaningful way, and because the film keeps nudging you to acknowledge that it's all a big joke, you've got no emotional stake in what happens. Chaos without consequence isn't scary. It's just noise.

Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates are back, but they're essentially human furniture this time around, there to react to the madness rather than drive anything. John Glover is having an absolute blast as the eccentric media mogul villain, and I'd be lying if I said he wasn't fun to watch, but he's too gleefully daft to be threatening. The satire of corporate culture and round-the-clock media is genuinely interesting as an idea, and there are flashes where it almost lands, but it keeps getting buried under the next gag, the next creature, the next bit of business. And then there's Hulk Hogan, showing up to address the audience directly, which I'll grant is a choice that takes a certain kind of confidence.

None of this makes it unwatchable. There's an anarchic energy to The New Batch that's genuinely hard to hate, and if you go in wanting pure spectacle, puppetry, and mayhem, you'll find plenty of it. It's often fun, sometimes very funny, and the craft on display is legitimately impressive. But fun and satisfying aren't the same thing, and the film mistakes being relentless for being entertaining. By the time it's over, you feel less like you've watched a movie and more like you've been through a very elaborate attraction.

The soul of the original has been replaced by a circus. A technically superior circus, yes. But a circus all the same.

Two and a half stars.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1990  | Watched: 2025-08-05

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Joe Dante: Gremlins (1984)
More with Zach Galligan: Rising Storm (1989) · Gremlins (1984)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)