Never Get Them Wet / Never Feed Them After Midnight / Always Buy a Ticket / Don’t Drink the Tea

The animated prequel to the comedy horror movie classic recounts how Mr Wing, as a small boy in Shanghai, first encountered the adorable Mogwai and their demonic Gremlin alter-egos.

It’s easy to forget quite how dark Joe Dante and Chris Columbus’s original movie was, although, to be honest, even more frightening is that I first saw Gremlins on its release in 1984 nearly forty long years ago. How did that happen? I’ve seen it at least four times and it remains a firm favourite brilliantly blending the very funny with the anarchically unsettling. At least, that’s how I remember it. It’s at least two decades since my last viewing.

I can’t deny I was a bit nervous about this new animated incarnation. Would it be watered down beyond recognition for a younger TV audience? I’m pleased to report that my fears were unfounded. Yes, Tze Chun has reimagined the franchise through family friendly spectacles, but it’s beautifully pitched. Friendly Mogwai, Gizmo, takes the lead as a sort of super-cute but pro-active Baby Yoda, but there’s also an array of villains who are dangerous enough to be satisfying for a crusty sixty-something horror gunslinger like me.

Four episodes in and I’m fully engaged with Sam Wing’s boyhood quest to save humanity from a Gremlin apocalypse, and there are lots of lovely side plots reflecting the Mogwai/Gremlin premise that there is good and bad in everyone. Matthew Rhys has a lot of fun with soul-swallowing arch villain Riley Greene; there are shades of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil in the battle with the shapeshifting Odd-Odd atop a speeding steam train; and even hints of Neil Gaiman in the dream-stealing but ultimately lonely Meng Po.

The animation is attractive throughout; elegantly, wittily storyboarded, each 22 minute episode perfectly and satisfyingly paced.

Verdict: Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai sees the franchise in good hands, and will open it up to a whole new generation – although there ought to be a health warning for younger parents who think it might be a fun afternoon to go back to the original movie with their impressionable tinies. 9/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com