Warning: This article contains spoilers. If you haven't seen this movie, please don't read on..
Joe Dante holds a certain image in the minds of many film lovers. Mostly, he’s the guy who held onto the old time “creature feature” shtick, giving contemporary audiences a glimpse into the world of 50s B-movie fare. That he had his biggest successes in the 80s also means that his remains fondly remembered by today’s current batch of slightly older film geeks; hi there!
The ‘burbs is a classic of the black comedy genre, which is as darkly funny as it is a scathing indictment of suburban paranoia and conformity within small communities. The film follows a trio of neighbours who steadily progress in their victimisation of one of a neighbouring household because they find their behaviour… weird.
Now, there is certainly an argument to be made that the film’s searing attack on small town small-mindedness, so brilliantly captured in Hanks’s monologue, is irreparably undercut by the subsequent closing minutes of the film, but this moment remains an intense condemnation of the people who become suspicious of others for no reason other than they are different.
The Klopek's is destroyed. What hasn't been blown completely apart is now completely on fire. Ray now sits to side, having miraculously survived the blast, bandaged and broken. He knows he's in serious trouble. Meanwhile, Art holds to his suspicions, believing that the truth isn't far away. Finally, Ray can take no more...