It is a wacky, satirical spectacle of chaos.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2019

A wildly original roller-coaster ride of hilarious mischief.

| Dec 6, 2013

Here's the season's most delicious and unexpected surprise. Despite the horror-flick title, Gremlins is a movie of wicked wit and startling invention, and it has a heart that's at least a match for the special effects.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2013

A horror-comedy about cute little Christmas toy/pets who turn into murderous monsters wreaking havoc on a Norman Rockwellian town.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 4, 2013

Brilliantly potent social critique of Reagan-era fear-mongering and consumerism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2012

The 1984 creature feature in which a Capra-esque idyll is besieged by ravening beasties.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2012

The humans are little more than dress-extras for the mechanics.

| Nov 27, 2007

What's confusing yet ultimately illuminating is the way his gremlins function as a free-floating metaphor, suggesting at separate junctures everything from teenagers to blacks to various Freudian suppressions.

| Nov 27, 2007

Dante is perhaps the first filmmaker since Frank Tashlin to base his style on the formal free-for-all of animated cartoons; he is also utterly heartless.

| Nov 27, 2007

Dante gleefully sinks his teeth into the kind of fluffy, sugary, sickly small town fantasy beloved of his pal and sometime producer Spielberg.

| Jun 24, 2006

Gleefully mischievous and full of dark, magical energy.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 12, 2006

At the level of Serious Film Criticism, it's a meditation on the myths in our movies: Christmas, families, monsters, retail stores, movies, boogeymen. At the level of Pop Moviegoing, it's a sophisticated, witty B movie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Gremlins is far more interested in showing off its knowledge of movie lore and making random jokes than in providing consistent entertainment.

| May 20, 2003

Devilishly dark humour and mischief romp.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 18, 2001

The pitch black comedy works, and it makes you wonder how a generation of parents took their kids to see this -- as children's entertainment -- without question. Ah, salad days.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000