Wes Craven was one of the most accomplished and influential film directors of our time, both in the horror/thriller genre and for the cinematic world as a whole. He's best known for the Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, but has directed plenty of other classic horror titles like The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, Swamp Thing, and more.
Looking back at Craven's filmography, people are usually familiar with his most popular titles, but what about his underrated movies like The People Under the Stairs and Deadly Blessing? Below we've highlighted three of our favorite Craven movies that don't get discussed as much as the others and all of them are available to stream right now!
Red Eye (2005)
Red Eye has been in conversation as of late because Christopher Landon credits his latest thriller Drop as a "love letter" to this gripping film starring Cillian Murphy, Rachel McAdams, and Brian Cox. McAdams plays hotel manager Lisa Reisert, who is preparing flying home from her grandmother's funeral. At the airport, she meets a charming man named Jackson Rippner (Murphy) and is pleased to find they are sharing a row of seats on the upcoming flight.
But her luck runs out when she realizes she has become entangled in a dangerous conspiracy, with Jackson depending on her cooperation to carry out the assassination of a high-ranking government official. To ensure the receptionist's cooperation, he's kidnapped her father (Cox). What ensues is a tense cat-and-mouse thriller with Murphy and McAdams at the top of their game.
The People Under the Stairs (1991)
One thing that Craven is quite good at is creating movies where regular people do monstrous things. The People Under the Stairs is a prime example of that, and ranks up there with some of his most disturbing features. It centers on a creepy, incestuous pair of siblings kidnapping young boys to mutilate and torment before keeping them hidden in a basement beneath their stairs.
In addition to being total psychopaths, the siblings are greedy landlords. The sibling's consistently poor treatment of their tenants leads one of them, Fool, to break into their house and investigate, uncovering the horrors within. During his exploration, Fool crosses paths with a lone girl named Alice who hasn't succumbed to the same fate as the other boys and tries to help her escape.
Deadly Blessing (1981)
This 1981 slasher is set in a fanatical religious community cut off from the rest of the world, forbidden from speaking to people who don't practice their religion. When a member of their community is murdered, leaving his wife behind, the townsfolk grow suspicious of her and her life is put in jeopardy as people begin to wonder if she might have had something to do with what happened.
As far as Craven's movies go, Deadly Blessing is far from one of his most popular movies and one of the lead actors even received a Razzie nomination during the year it was released. But I've always enjoyed this one and felt it was pretty fun despite the flack it got. It doesn't live up to the hype of some of his other films, yet remains an intriguing venture nonetheless.