Directed by Joe Dante | 1989

With Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Rick Ducommon, Corey Feldman

“[Director Joe] Dante and [writer Dana] Olsen make their snug little world as wide and as varied as the Universal globe that contains it.”

—Jonathan Rosenbaum

Everyman Ray Peterson (Hanks) just wants to enjoy his week’s vacation lounging in suburban splendor. But then the weird, nocturnal new family moves in and the whispering (Are they murderers? Satanists?) among the neighbors (including Dern as the street’s resident militaristic nut job) starts up. Gremlins director Dante’s relentlessly goofball satire “achieves an admirably wacky consistency as it debunks American mores and movie clichés, from Hitchcock and Leone to Michael Winner and Tobe Hooper” (Time Out London).