Netflix’s Horror Movie Hit Is A Terrifying Replacement For This 40-Year-Old Steven Spielberg Classic

There’s Something In The Barn shares a lot of thematic elements with the Steven Spielberg-produced Gremlins, highlighting how the core elements that made the latter into a Christmas classic still hold up. There’s Something In The Barn is a hilariously absurd horror/comedy, pitting a family of Americans new to Norway against an assortment of Elves that reside in the barn next to their new home. The result is a gleefully over the top splatter-fest as the Nordheim family defends themselves from the vicious little menaces.

In concept and practice, it’s actually remarkably similar to Gremlins. Released in 1984, Gremlins focuses on the Peltzer family and their friends in Kingston Falls as they face off with a number of vicious Gremlins that are terroizing the town. Both films use these similar stories to create classic alternative Christmas-themed movies, embracing a fusion of horror and comedy to produce a hilarious splatter-fest. Their similar critical success suggests that this approach remains an effective genre-fusion decades apart, and highlights how much audiences love a good subversive take on a holiday movie.

There’s Something In The Barn Shares Several Similarities To The Steven Spielberg-Produced Movie Gremlins

The monstous elves and general tone of There’s Something In The Barn shares a number of similarities with the Mogwai and the plot of Gremlins. Both films are grisly takes on the Christmas movie formula, subverting the typically sweet nature of that holiday. Both movies force family units to confront an unexpectedly grim take on a classic creature, with grisly results. In Gremlins, it’s the transformed Mogwai who are the primary villains of the Christmas film. In There’s Something In The Barn, it’s barn elves, who are revealed to be living on the property that the Nordheim family relocates to.

Both films embrace this tonal disparity to great comedic effect and undercut classic holiday films with a fair share of creative violence. It’s all compounded by the fact that the violence is committed by an outwardly cute sounding collection of creatures. There’s Something In The Barn and Gremlins both embrace a snarky tone that further separates them from other holiday fare. This gives everything a tongue-in-cheek touch that helps the over-the-top violence and mayhem feel more specific than chaotic. While both films have enough unique edges to stand apart, their shared concepts and elements make them an interesting comparison point.

How There’s Something In The Barn’s Elves Compare To Gremlins’ Creatures

In many ways, the Elves of There’s Something In The Barn are very similar to the Mogwai from Gremlins, which eventually morph into their scaly Gremlin forms. Both sets of creatures are portrayed as small and realistically grimey takes on fantastical creatures. Their rampages share some distinct similarities, too. Both the Gremlins and the Elves prove capable of using human technology for their own goals, and even both utilize a gun at one point in their respective films. Both sets of creatures also operate on a set of rules that are meant to keep them stable.

This is a key difference between the films. In Gremlins, the three rules that are broken focus on the care of the creatures. Feeding them after midnight and exposing them to water causes the Mogwai to become fearsome and ferocious Gremlins. In There’s Something In The Barn, the rules are more rooted in appeasing the creatures to ensure they don’t lash out at any humans that encounter them. The Elves don’t necessarily transform like the Mogwai do, instead simply lashing out as they are disturbed by the humans who move into their territory.

There’s Something In The Barn Maintains Gremlins’ Critical Acclaim

Notably, both There’s Something In The Barn and Gremlins both found critical success with a functionally similar premise. Gremlins boasts an impressive 86% positive review score on Rotten Tomatoes, and has spent forty years as an enduring subversive Christmas classic. While There’s Something In The Barn doesn’t quite reach those critical heights, it still has a very solid 79% positive review score on Rotten Tomatoes. Both films speak to a natural cinematic impulse to subvert the expectations audiences have for holiday-themed films. It makes for a natural comedic tenor that benefits There’s Something In The Barn and Gremlins.

The success of both films highlights the natural joys of infusing the Christmas season with goofy and gory versions of the innocent holiday imagery. It’s a trend that also works in other recent subversive Christmas films like Violent Night, Anna and the Apocalypse, or Krampus. There’s Something In The Barn directly riffs on the same creative impulses as Gremlins though, making the pair a surprisingly effective double-feature. There’s Something In The Barn gleefully horrifying approach to its theoretically cute creatures proves that the underlying elements of Gremlins still resonate with audiences, even decades later.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes