The People Under the Stairs

Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs is a deliriously entertaining horror satire about a young Black boy from the ghetto who breaks into his wealthy landlords' booby-trapped house and discovers they have been kidnapping, mutilating, and imprisoning children in the basement. Craven channels the Reagan-era wealth gap into a horror fairy tale where the real monsters are the property-owning class. Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, reunited from Twin Peaks, are fantastically deranged as the incestuous landlord couple. The film's class commentary has aged remarkably well, and its blend of scares, comedy, and social awareness is pure Craven.