By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
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Why Watch This Movie With Your Students
Here's what your students naturally take away from the movie, whether through themes, values, ideas, or perspectives.
🐉 A simple set of rules drives the entire plot. Three rules, three violations, one escalating disaster. The structure is easy for students to follow and even easier to analyze afterward.
🎄 It subverts the cozy Christmas movie setup. Kingston Falls looks like a postcard small town at the start. Gremlins uses that familiar, comforting setting to make the chaos that follows land harder.
🏭 It takes aim at consumer culture and human overreach. The shopkeeper's closing warning about what society has done with nature's gifts is the clearest statement of the movie's actual point, delivered after the chaos rather than before it.
😱 It blends horror and comedy in a way students will recognize from modern movies. Gremlins helped establish a tone that mixes real scares with dark humor, a combination that still shows up across horror comedy today.
🎬 It has a well documented place in movie rating history. Gremlins was one of the movies that led the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating, giving students a real world example of how audience reaction can shape industry standards.
👩👦 Its human characters carry real stakes. Billy, his mother, and Kate all have to take direct action against the gremlins rather than waiting to be rescued, giving the movie more than just special effects to hold a student's attention.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
📋 A free editable parent permission slip is available for this movie. It explains the educational benefits of watching movies in class and includes a space for parental consent. → Download Free Permission Slip on TpT (Free resource)
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Contains fantasy violence including stabbing, decapitation, and characters exploding, played for dark comedic effect rather than realism.
- A science teacher character is killed off screen by a gremlin.
- A brief line references suicide in a joking context.
- Mild language includes one use of a mild profanity.
- No sexual content beyond a single suggestive gremlin gesture and no drug use involving human characters.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. The guide's comprehension questions track the plot in chronological order, while the creative writing tasks push students further: a reporter's account of the chaos in Kingston Falls, and a two part profile documenting the Mogwai's transformation into a gremlin. Together they cover factual recall alongside narrative and descriptive writing.
🌐 Social Studies Teachers. Gremlins doubles as a snapshot of 1980s anxieties about consumer culture and unchecked ambition, visible in how quickly the town's adults reach for destruction rather than understanding. The guide does not include dedicated social studies activities, but the comprehension questions give students a structured way to follow the story while a teacher builds discussion around those themes separately.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. The guide hands a substitute a ready made session: 30 chronological comprehension questions with answers included, plus two creative writing tasks that need no additional setup. A substitute can run the full lesson without having seen the movie beforehand.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. Gremlins works well as a single student session built around its rules and consequences structure. The comprehension questions and the two creative writing tasks, the reporter account and the Mogwai profile, both work fine for independent completion without needing a group setting.
🌟 Supporting All Learners Movie guides can be a wonderfully calm fit for students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities. The structured format gives every student a clear purpose during viewing, easing uncertainty and allowing them to engage at their own pace. If you teach in a special education or learning support setting, you may find this guide a gentle and practical resource. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 5-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
30 questions in chronological order covering the movie from start to finish, with answers included.
Part 2: Creativity
Two writing tasks. Students write as a rookie reporter covering the aftermath in Kingston Falls, then document the Mogwai's profile in its normal state before describing its transformation into a gremlin.
“The students enjoyed the worksheets and creating their drawings of the Gremlins. They are proudly displayed on the walls of the class.”
— Leslie P.
“My students enjoyed filling in the movie guide as they watched. It kept them focused on the movie.”
— Terri S.
What Makes This Guide Different
This guide moves past generic comprehension questions by giving students a structured way to engage with Gremlins on two levels. The 30 question set tracks the plot in the order it actually happens, which matters for a movie where the escalation from Gizmo to full blown gremlin chaos is the whole point.
The creative writing tasks push further than recall. Asking students to write as a reporter covering the aftermath, or to document the Mogwai's transformation as if compiling a scientific profile, gives them a reason to think about cause and effect rather than just confirming they watched the movie.
Mr Hull's Movie Guides has been creating classroom-ready movie resources since 2017. Browse 390+ guides covering movies for every grade level, subject, and occasion at the Mr Hull's Movie Guides TPT Store.
