10 Movie Messages Completely Undermined By Their Ending
3. Snooping Is Bad - The Burbs
Well, at least this one's pretty funny, right?
The cult fave 1989 black comedy The 'Burbs stars Tom Hanks as suburbanite Ray Peterson, who along with his neighbours comes to believe that the reclusive new family on the block, the Klopeks, are actually part of a satanic cult.
The bulk of the movie serves as a pretty hilarious commentary on suburban boredom, with the expected outcome being that the paranoid neighbourhood is absolutely, positively wrong about the Klopeks.
But the ending pulls an insane 180 by revealing that, indeed, the Klopeks murdered the previous residents of the house they've moved into, effectively justifying the neighbourhood's deranged snooping.
It's a fun twist while you're watching it, though does rather contradict what the movie appears to be shooting for for about 90% of its runtime - that is, critiquing the fancies of judgmental curtain-twitchers who won't just mind their own business.
Apparently one of several endings conceived for The 'Burbs' actually saw the Klopeks be innocent, yet this was scrapped in favour of a punchier double-twist. As such it's perhaps little surprise that the film proved majorly divisive with critics.