REVIEW: THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS
The Phantom
THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(baum...@esquire.dpw.com)
The Phantom missed the opening titles for THE PEOPLE UNDER THE
STAIRS, Wes Craven's latest horror film -- he was under the impression
that it took less than 30 minutes to get from lower Manhattan to
midtown, an impression the New York City Transit Authority apparently
doesn't share -- so he doesn't know how good they were. Perhaps they
were clever; perhaps they were scary; perhaps they leaped onto the
screen from under a staircase. The Phantom just doesn't know, since he
arrived just a few moments too late to catch them. He sincerely hopes
that they were good, however, since most of the rest of the film (which
he did not, unfortunately, arrive too late to miss) ranged from bad to
awful; from dopey to imbecilic; from silly to sorry.
Simply put, PEOPLE is a mess. Worse still, it's Wes' mess -- all
of it. Though one can look at the last few scenes of EXORCIST III and
see the meddling hand of nervous studio executives -- people who felt
that if William Friedkin's excellent and very literate film didn't have
at least one gory exorcism, no one would go see it -- it's quite obvious
that PEOPLE was Wes' baby from first reel to last.
It's hard to say what was going through Craven's mind when he set
out to make this film. Although it's possible to make a horror film
that also works as a comedy, it's not an easy task, and the result is
rarely successful as either a horror film or a comedy. Sam Raimi's EVIL
DEAD 2 did succeed in this, but it also had the luxury of having a
successful horror film -- the original EVIL DEAD -- to satirize. On the
other hand, consider the abominable sequel to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW
MASSACRE. Here again, director Tobe Hooper had the opportunity to
satirize the classic original, but the result was as close to a complete
failure as is imaginable. TCM II worked neither as a horror film nor as
a comedy, though it did manage to make those who saw it feel profoundly
sorry for everyone involved in the production. That kind of sympathy
isn't easy to elicit, and Hooper should be given some credit for getting
whole theaters full of people to blush and turn their heads away in
embarrassment. It's an achievement that's not perhaps on the same level
as getting whole theaters full of people to laugh or cringe with terror,
but it's an achievement nonetheless.
Unfortunately, getting whole theaters full of people to scratch
their heads, turn to their companions, and wonder aloud how such a
terrible film could ever have been made is not the way to establish
yourself as one of the masters of cinematic horror. Although Craven has
had far more successes than has Tobe Hooper (whose goofy, nearly
nonsensical LIFEFORCE came to mind at several points during the
ludicrous goings on in Craven's film), he's also been rather uneven; for
every HILLS HAVE EYES and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, we seem to get an
equal number of films like SHOCKER, DEADLY BLESSING, DEADLY FRIEND
(which Leonard Maltin claims is the only movie ever made in which
someone is beheaded by a basketball) and his latest, THE PEOPLE UNDER
THE STAIRS.
At his best and when working with a strong story, Wes Craven is
able to fashion small, self-contained worlds of terror, in which
ordinary people get caught up in extraordinary events. His camera work,
sense of pacing, and visual flair are strikingly good -- especially in a
genre that provides employment to so many untalented hacks -- and even
films as dumb as SHOCKER or as bad as THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS look
terrific. His films all have a rich, colorful texture that's rarely
seen in the generally flat and uninteresting horror product churned out
of Hollywood with dismaying regularity these days. Oftentimes the way a
film looks and "feels" is as important as what's actually going on
onscreen; after all, David Lynch's classic ERASERHEAD manages to unnerve
nearly everyone who sees it, even though very very little actually
happens. Sam Raimi's unsteady camera work and grainy film stock helped
make the audience for THE EVIL DEAD feel that things in that film were
somewhat out of control, and that Raimi wasn't going to feel bound by
the traditional agreement between directors and their audiences: that no
matter how gruesome or disturbing individual scenes may get, the film
will soon return to normality and another seven or eight minutes of
pointless dialogue and exposition.
Alas, Craven's latest film looks great but feels like a week in bed
with the flu. It may just be coincidence, but by the end of THE PEOPLE
UNDER THE STAIRS, the Phantom was feeling decidedly under the weather,
and since then he seems to be unable to shake a nagging headache and
occasional chills (notably absent during the film). It could, of
course, be winter's first cold; on the other hand, it could also be the
first outward manifestation of the horror malaise that the Phantom has
been in the grip of since he saw CHILD'S PLAY 3 -- certainly none of the
horror films the Phantom has seen since had to work too hard to generate
headaches and occasional drowsiness. Call it Chronic Disappointment
Syndrome, if you will. The Phantom plans on taking some extra vitamin C
and staying in bed until CAPE FEAR opens next week, on the assumption
that Dr. Scorsese and his able assistant Dr. DeNiro will have a cure.
There's a fundamental conceptual problem at the heart of THE PEOPLE
UNDER THE STAIRS: the notion that a crazy, sadistic couple could trap
and keep dozens of teenage boys in their basement, feed them with table
scraps and bits of the mailman, deprive each of them of their freedom,
their dignity and their humanity, and then have them just *live* there
and in the walls of their home like overgrown, bipedal rats, really puts
rather a strain on our credulity. Oh, sure, they do give the boys
flashlights and a generous supply of replacement batteries -- and
goodness knows, that alone would keep the Phantom in someone's basement
for at least a week or two -- but after a few minutes, when we realize
that Craven doesn't intend these boys to be spirits or vampires or pets,
and that he really intends for us to buy this loopy premise, it becomes
painfully obvious that Craven won't be able to stop THE PEOPLE UNDER THE
STAIRS from turning into first a comedy of the absurd and then a
travesty of the inane.
Even if we put aside the film's obvious logical flaws -- the
enormous and rather unlikely amount of space between the walls of the
house; the apparently huge interior of what from the outside appears to
be a very modest sized home; the football field-sized basement; the
ability of a small boy repeatedly to get in and out of a house from
which twenty or so other boys apparently cannot escape -- there's too
much about THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS that just doesn't make sense.
Why throw in the interminable nonsense about this couple being slumlords
who apparently own half the buildings in the "ghetto"? What difference
does it make if the little boy and his family are going to be evicted?
Can Craven possibly believe that anyone in the audience actually cares
about these cardboard people? The film spends a lot of time explaining
who this crazy couple is and what they're doing to the good folks in the
"ghetto", but to what end? After all, it's likely that presenting these
people as child abusers and cannibals would be enough to get the
audience clamoring for their demise -- making them landlords on top of
everything else will certainly help whip the audience into a frenzy of
hatred, but it will likely do so at the expense of the story's suspense.
As is always the case with horror, too much explanation spoils the
broth, and with THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, Craven makes the very
mistake he so neatly avoided in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and THE HILLS
HAVE EYES: he spends much too long trying to explain who these people
are and why they're doing what they're doing. No one really needed to
know Freddy's whole sordid history -- a few hints sufficed -- and
goodness knows the freakish family in the HILLS didn't require any
explanation at all. The action and the terror spoke for themselves.
But in THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, Craven seems to have decided to
make a very nasty "movie of the week"; to that end, he apparently
further decided that his audience wouldn't be able to accept the rather
unlikely premise of the film if he didn't devote 30 minutes to the
after-school special-like story-within-a-story about the poor but brave
little black boy and his poor but deserving family. Had this 30 minutes
all been concentrated at the beginning of the film, perhaps the Phantom
could advise his phans to arrive a half-hour late; alas, Craven has
carefully placed stop signs throughout his film so that whenever the
action or horror threatens to get too intense or the audience too
involved with the film, the plot quickly calls for another few minutes
of talk, talk, talk. Phans who see this sad excuse for a horror film
are advised to rent the original ELM STREET film and view it with this
in mind -- they may be surprised and saddened to see how tightly focused
that film was, how little of the film's time and plot is wasted on
needless exposition, and how much more frightening Freddy is because the
film forgoes having a plot that does not directly involve him. When
we're not with the kids in their dreams, we're in the real world where
all their efforts to get an adult to believe them fall on deaf ears.
The more they fail and the more Freddy succeeds at wiping out the entire
group of Elm Street kids, the more the suspense and terror in the film
builds; sadly, this is in marked contrast to the pacing and plot of THE
PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, which limp along to an extremely phony climax
long after everyone in the audience has lost interest.
This is not to say that a horror film can't having all the
trappings of a "movie of the week"; after all, THE STEPFATHER is an
excellent example of how a filmmaker can logically extend the endless
"brother against brother", "father against son", "mother against
daughter", "father against mother" movie "specials" that fill the
networks' after-dinner schedules. But it's not a simple thing to do,
and a filmmaker who sets out to create a film like THE STEPFATHER would
be well-advised to heed the reasons that that film was a success:
excellent acting; a thoughtful script; and tight direction -- three of
the things that THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS unfortunately lacks.
Horror films with unlikely premises can certainly succeed, and if
more care had been taken with THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, it's unlikely
that anyone would notice or criticize its many logical flaws. But since
the film is so badly done, so ineptly plotted, and so filled with scene
after scene of people talking, talking, talking, none of it works, and
the film's many flaws become all too apparent. You know you've seen a
good horror film when you don't begin to wonder why the people in the
film did all the crazy, dangerous things they did until long after the
film has ended; likewise, you know you've seen a bad horror film when
you start wondering that almost before the first killing. Let's just
say that the Phantom spent so much of his time during the film wondering
why nothing made any sense that by the time it was over he'd all but
forgotten how promising the film seemed as the opening credits rolled.
Phans are well advised to steer clear of this turkey and hope that
Wes Craven will do something to make up for it with his next film. One
bright note until then: no one need worry about THE PEOPLE UNDER THE
STAIRS II.
: The Phantom
: baum...@esquire.dpw.com
: {cmcl2,uunet}!esquire!baumgart