dir. John G. Avildsen. Recommended.

In Neighbors, John Belushi is a married working stiff in a cul de sac, and then Dan Aykroyd and his wife move in next door and unravel John Belushi’s entire life in the course of a single night.

I found this movie to be a revelation, one of the best movies I’ve ever seen “about” latent dissatisfaction with settled working life & the desire to tear it down completely. Tonally it floats somewhere in the gray wastes between Home Alone (1990) and your worst and most haunted anxiety/sex nightmares, while the action is as anarchic and blackenedly nihilistic as The Idiots (1998)-mode Lars von Trier, bizarrely weaponized via it also being an Aykroyd/Belushi joint. If I had a genie I could easily waste a wish replacing Belushi “College” merch everywhere with the final Belushi image from Neighbors, at sunrise in full GBV “motor away” ecstasy/damnation, about to leave his cul de sac forever.

Definitely not a movie for everyone, but if you’re currently thinking “huh” or “whoa” and not “haha woof… pass” then buddy… you gotta watch this one. A great double-feature with Uncut Gems (2019) or Tim Heidecker in The Comedy (2012), both of which use this same “comedy star-power backing an unsettling movie” tactic to create a similar vibe, each with pretty different results.