One main theme of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic Jurassic Park may be that amusement parks are incredibly hard to operate, but an equally important lesson of that film (and the Michael Crichton book on which it is based) is that monsters bring families together. Alan Grant has no interest in having children with Ellie Satler, at least until he has to rescue the grandchildren of the park’s founder. They form a makeshift family and the rest is cinema history. Families under stress are a recurrent feature of Spielberg’s movies, from 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the 2005 adaptation of War of the Worlds, and the countless films they have inspired. Fractured or broken, they come back together as something monstrous or terrifying emerges, re-binding through shared adversity. Spielberg, who was himself deeply affected by his parents’ divorce, seems to ask: What kind of monster or world-shattering event would be enough to keep a family together? So one can see why he might have been attracted to the story of the Hopkinsville Goblins.