Gremlins (1984) Review

          Gremlins (1984) is a horror comedy which tells the story of an inventor (played by Hoyt Axton) who looks through an antique shop in search for Christmas gifts and discovers a small cute little furry creature called a 'Mogwai'. He takes it back to his family and nicknames it 'Gizmo'. There are three rules that the family needs to follow in order to properly take care of this thing which are as follows: 1) Never expose it to bright light (especially sunlight, which will kill it), 2) Never let it touch water because that'll cause it to multiply), and most importantly 3) Whatever you do, don't feed it after midnight because it'll into a gremlin which will ultimately cause chaos. Well shockingly enough, all three 3 rules are broken and all hell breaks loose, so it's up to William Peltzer (played by Zach Galligan) to try to kill all of the gremlins in the town to save the day.
          The special effects in regards to the creatures are all great, and still hold up today. The way the Mogwais move their eyes and eyelids looks brilliant and they're really adorable. The gremlins are also really fun monsters. The film gladly doesn't itself too seriously with them as they are seen smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, taking control of vehicles, messing with lights, eating and throwing around food everywhere, and more. There was one really cute scene where are all the gremlins sing "Heigh-Ho" from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". It was awesome.
         The acting from the humans is all pretty good for this type of movie, and I really liked the fact that the movie is set during the Christmas holiday, which makes for a interesting black comedy. My only real issues with the movie are that the pacing could've been tightened up just a little bit as there were parts that felt a little slow-going, and this may sound a little nitpicky but, perhaps I would've liked just a little bit more drama for the human characters since there were moments where I actually felt sympathy for them.
         But on the whole, "Gremlins" is a very good movie that pretty much knows exactly what it aims to be, and thankfully doesn't really push to be much more than that. I may end up watching this annually over the holidays as I had a very fun time. I'm very happy I tried it out.
         I give "Gremlins" (1984) directed by Joe Dante an 8 out of 10.