The People Under the Stairs (1991): D

Throughout the past season of Project Greenlight, Wes Craven was repeatedly referred to as “the master of horror,” a lofty title immediately refuted by The People Under the Stairs, perhaps the most staggeringly incompetent movie in the director’s uneven canon. Imagine The Goonies via Alice in Wonderland but with mild gore, swearing, deviant sexual imagery and a laughable subtext about class struggle, and you have some idea of the confusion plaguing this 1991 Craven misfire, which can’t decide whether it’s a kid’s film (replete with Home Alone-style slapstick gags) or one designed to terrify adults. The story’s “monsters” are a crazy brother (Everett McGill) and sister (Wendy Robie) who, when not imprisoning and mutilating kidnapped children in their secret passageway-infested mansion, like to evict lowly black people from their ghetto homes, and Craven (seemingly possessed by white liberal guilt) seizes every opportunity to hammer home his lame-brained allegory’s message about the mistreatment of African-Americans by nasty, capitalist Caucasians. Add to this mix some pathetic make-up work, lousy wide-eyed acting from Brandon Adams (as the aptly named pint-size hero “Fool”) and intolerable illogicality (why do the kids under the stairs look like Leatherface wannabes? Why does Ving Rhames rudely smash his way into the house, only to then tiptoe around? How is such a decrepit building completely soundproof?), and you’ve got a debacle that should have been consigned to Universal’s basement.

Comments

[Martin Schofield]

Didn't think it was that bad. "People under the Stairs", that is. Craven is self-conscious, granted, but what redeems the movie for me is at least he has some ambition in it and it is solidly acted..the titular people under the stairs coming out of the walls, the literal stairs, etc, at the movie's climax owes more than a little bit to the ending of "Night of the Living Dead"

[Amanda]

wes craven is a brilliant director and i thought that was one of his best films, it was more suspensefull than horrific though. I actually like brandon adams, he was a good actor back in the days.

[gravyface]

Just watched this on Netflix; couldn't wait for it to be over (probably should've just turned it off).

As the author aptly describes, this movie is completely uneven. It's like a bad after school special meets a haunted house B flick.

So many holes, just terrible, and from Wes Craven, completely baffling.