Horror Movies Seen As Pithy Life Lessons

• Phantasm: Don't have sex in a cemetery at night.
• The Night of the Living Dead: Frankly, just avoid cemeteries altogether.
• Dracula: Beware of illegal immigrants.
• Frankenstein: Early childhood education is vitally important to the development of a child.
• The Exorcist: Don't become a Roman Catholic priest: Low pay, high mortality rate.
• The Nightmare on Elm Street series: Don't take justice into your own hands, especially if it involves burning an alleged felon to death.
• The Friday the 13th series: Don't have pre-marital sex.
• The Hallowe'en series: Seriously, don't have pre-marital sex.
• Cujo: Have your pet regularly vaccinated for rabies and other diseases.
• The Omen: The Italian health-care system is a mess.
• The Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Home gardening can be a life-changer.
• The Day of the Triffids: Green energy is bad.
• Gremlins: Have your pets spayed or neutered.
• Pet Sematary: If you have young children, don't live close to a road.

The Silence (2019)

The Silence (2019): adapted from the Tim Lebbon novel by Carey and Shane Van Dyke; directed by John R. Leonetti; starring Stanley Tucci (Hugh Andrews), Kiernan Shipka (Ally Andrews), Miranda Otto (Kelly Andrews), Kyle Breitkopf (Jude Andrews), Kate Trotter (Lynn), and John Corbett (Glenn): 

Competent horror-thriller just as long as you don't think too hard about its central presence. Like A Quiet Place, it pits a small family group against monsters that hunt by sound. 

In this case, the monsters come from a recently opened cave system "1000 feet below the Earth" rather than space. They look like the offspring of Gremlins and medieval gargoyles. They breed so fast that they rapidly threaten the Earth. What were they eating in that cave system during their millions of years of imprisonment? One another, I guess.

It's all solid and occasionally squirmy. Don't think too hard about the creatures' sensitivity to sound and the way they swarm it. Or what they ate. Stanley Tucci and Miranda Otto are solid pros. As in A Quiet Place, a deaf daughter plays a key role, along with American sign language. Certainly an adequate time-waster with something of an abrupt ending. Lightly recommended.

Gremlins (1984)

Gremlins: written by Chris Columbus; directed by Joe Dante; starring Zach Galligan (Billy), Phoebe Cates (Kate), Hoyt Axton (Randall Peltzer), Keye Luke (Mr. Wing), and Polly Holliday (Mrs. Deagle) (1984): Gremlins is a blissfully nasty critique of capitalism, the commercialization of the American Christmas, 'small-town values,' and the American family in general. That it was a huge box-office success in 1984 seem remarkable, though having Steven Spielberg's name attached to it didn't hurt. He did produce it, after all, through his newly formed Amblin Entertainment.

But boy, does the small town of Kingston Falls ever get dismantled literally and figuratively! When Zach Galligan's Billy gets the mysterious creature known as a Mogwai from his generally absent, incompetent inventor of a father (Hoyt Axton), he names it Gizmo and then pretty much ignores the three warnings about what one must never do with a Mogwai. 

His casual attitude leads to a small-town apocalypse that is, admittedly, really his father's fault more than his: the Mogwai wasn't actually for sale from Keye Luke's mysterious shop owner. The shop owner's grandson's need to make some money off a Hoyt Axton desperate for a unique gift for his son to compensate for his lengthy absences from home -- whew! -- sets the whole disaster in motion.

And so it goes as all Hell breaks loose after an initially idyllic beginning with the lovable Gizmo, voiced by a cooing Howie Mandel. Once the army of Gremlins is unleashed, Christmas is ruined. Really, really ruined. Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates make for an appealing pair of leads, but it's the real-world special effects of the Gremlins and the Mogwai that dominate the movie. They're marvels from creature creator Chris Walas and his studio. 

The script from a young Chris Columbus is sharp and nasty (indeed, it was rewritten by Spielberg and company to tone it down). Joe Dante's direction has a real sense of anarchic menace throughout, though he's also very good at the quiet, slightly askew Norman Rockwell world of the movie's first act, a 'happy' small-town mask that's already slipping off as the movie begins to reveal the shiny happy skull beneath the skin. The mohawk on the chief evil Gremlin is one of a long string of signalling evil through a haircut generally favoured by harmless punk rockers and their fans at the time the film came out. Oh, culture! Recommended.