The People Under the Stairs

 The People Under the Stairs

Writer & Director ~ Wes Craven

1991, USA

Stars ~ Brandon Quintin Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie

An oddity that’s tonally all-over-the-place, which isn’t unusual for Craven. Having enticed the viewer in with the promise of a sinister population under the house (they look like … zombies? Mutants?), there’s the odd mash-up of fairy-tale-meets-urban-realism. Our protagonist is a young black boy, “Fool”, not stereotypically streetwise but convinced to commit crime for the good of his family. It’s mentioned in the documentary ‘Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror’ that the fact that this hero was a black kid was a key moment for some viewers not used to seeing themselves portrayed on screen – and for this, the kind of territory we’re more used to seeing post-Jordan Peele, Craven is to be commended.* And Craven’s committed too: the villains are grotesque white landlords who have a room full of money like Scrooge McDuck, are greedy for greed’s sake, and kidnap people for kinks.

To this end, Everett McGill and Wendy Robie ham it up and then some as if they’re finally being let off the hook after being an odd couple in ‘Twin Peaks’, which wasn’t so straight to begin with. Ving Rhames comes on like a proto-Juan from ‘Moonlight’. All the way through, Brandon Quintin Adams as “Fool” is the endearing, sensible, resourceful voice running through the walls of this unhinged urban fairy-tale. There’s a queasy rollercoaster of slapstick, the genuinely perverse, implications of horrific abuse next to unhelpfully coarse use of gimp suits (they aren’t synonymous), righteous social awareness, both sympathetic and cartoonish characterisation, etc etc. Quite often, you may wonder where you are, and it’s full of red herrings (not least the title). But like the geography of the house, Craven isn’t particularly interested in pinning things down but rather creating a funhouse of genre moods where his empathies for the disenfranchised provides the peg to hang it all from. It’s uneven, doesn’t work as much as it does, of its time in genre-feel as much as it’s ahead of its time in its sociological awareness, and ultimately an intriguing little oddity.

·         * Indeed, “[Jordan Peele] tells the interviewer that seeing a young Black protagonist was rare and almost unheard of. As a result, it positively impacted the representation of Black people in horror. Fool does not follow troupes, he does not die first, he is not the sacrificial Black character, and he proves successful by the movie's end.”