Sunday, June 27, 2021

Gremlin (2017)

Uncle Jim has a gremlin box and apparently he hates his family because he gives it to his mother.  The box has a dial on top and a creature inside. If you don't give the box away prior to the timer running out, the creature will kill you. Also you have to give it to someone you love, so technically Jim loves his mother, but since he's killing her by giving her the box, meh.

Jim's niece and her family are also in the house. When grandma is found dead in her bed, their son insists it was a monster. But no one believes him.

Daughter Anna stays out all night with her boyfriend and when they show up, her dad Adam gets mad. You'd think the first thing he would do is tell her about grandma's death, but they get in a fight about her behavior.  

In a movie called Gremlin, you'd expect to see at least one gremlin, but there isn't one.  When providing the legend of the box, they say it contains a god. 

The rules of the box are inconsistent. You need to give it to someone you love before the timer runs out. Yet Grandma gives the box to Adam, and the creature kills her.  Later the box is given to someone they don't love and that person is immediately killed by the creature. Then it is given to someone Adam loves, and that person is immediately killed so they had no chance to give the box to someone else. What the heck?

With dead bodies piling up, Adam doesn't want to call the police because they'll think they killed them. Yeah, he's probably right, but it definitely looks like you killed them when you hide it from the police. There's a backstory about their middle son being kidnapped and murdered, which I guess makes them suspicious even though there doesn't seem to be any indication that they had anything to do with this or were ever investigated.

And how does the creature grow to be the size of a house? What prompts this? And still I come back to the overwhelming problem with this movie that there is literally no gremlin in a movie called Gremlin.

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