Gremlins 2: The New Batch

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) is Joe Dante's horror-comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Billy and Kate have moved to New York and landed jobs inside a shiny corporate skyscraper, where they run into the fuzzy little Gizmo all over again.

The tower is its own high-tech world: a cable channel, a computer that runs everything, and a sealed genetics lab. A splash of water and a slice of cake after midnight is all it takes to break the rules, and a fresh swarm of green creatures is soon tearing through the floors. This time they reach the test tubes and mutate into something new — a lawyer Gremlin, a brainy talking one, even a singing batch with wings. Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates return, Christopher Lee plays the obsessed scientist, and John Glover hams it up as the building's megalomaniac mogul.

Dante turned the sequel into a wild parody of itself and of moviemaking in general; the monsters break the fourth wall and literally stop the film. That cartoonish Manhattan tower is a clear jab at the Donald Trump of the era. It flopped at the box office, then earned a cult following for exactly that anything-goes nerve. Stream Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) online on iFILM.