It’s Cape Fear meets ‘The Burbs in director John Schlesinger’s (Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man) Pacific Heights. Although you might be fooled by Hanz Zimmer’s score, which sounds a lot more like you’re watching Sexy Beetlejuice than a ’90s thriller. This is pure irony, of course, considering the film stars Beetlejuice himself, Michael Keaton, as a conman who is six feet from the edge and thinking maybe doing murder isn’t so far down.

For those of you arguing silently in your heads that Pacific Heights is not a horror movie, let me go ahead and agree with you. It’s a pure thriller. But imagine this for a moment; imagine somewhere out there is a fresh-off Batman Michael Keaton, sitting in a dark room twirling both a razor blade and a large cockroach through his fingers like some sort of emo fidget spinner, plotting you and your significant other’s demise. Now, imagine that dark room he’s in is inside of your very home. Finally, I want you to imagine that he’s there because he’s tricked you into leasing a room to him and then barricaded himself in, using loopholes in the law to his advantage and systematically destroying you financially and emotionally. He’s changed the locks. He’s doing some loud and mysterious construction work. His Porsche is even parked in your garage. Worst of all? He has those devil-may-care Michael Keaton eyes on your lady. Pure horror.

In this tale, a young couple decides to take a huge risk on renovating a large home in Pacific Heights, knowing the only way they’ll ever be able to afford it is if they immediately rent out the extra rooms for $1,000 to $1,300 a month. In 1990! That must be like $2 million adjusted for inflation today.

Pacific Heights is very interesting in how it treats Drake (Matthew Modine) and Patty (Melanie Griffith). It’s hard to tell if it’s attempting to paint them as an all-American loveable young couple or if it’s purposefully making them feel like snooty yuppies and it makes things kind of interesting. There are little moments where I am kind of rooting for Michael Keaton’s Carter Hayes character just a little bit. Before he goes full psycho nutbag, of course. There’s more going on in Pacific Heights than your average thriller of the time, is what I mean to say.

For instance, the opening of the film feels like it were created for a different film entirely. A very confused score plays as we see Carter in bed with a nude Beverly D’Angelo (Christmas Vacation), rubbing her down with an ice cube. You know, the usual. The whole scene is very Basic Instinct and seems as though we’re in for yet another erotic ’90s thriller. Suddenly, a bunch of dudes burst in and beat the living shit out of him and we’re in an entirely different movie.

Next, we’re roped in by a cautionary tale of what not to do if you’re a first-time landlord. The story comes from writer Daniel Pyne (The Sum of All Fears) and is actually inspired by a tenant he once had that he couldn’t evict. It’s all tinged with a kind of The Big Short level of fuckery as we watch this young couple, eager to be big shot landlords, get swindled. Michael Keaton is captivating to watch as a conman. He’s smooth-talking and full of charisma. Then there’s the way the script takes you through the legalities of just how badly he is screwing them both over…. and just how hard it is to fight something like that in court without a well-funded bank account.

Keaton has a few monologues that allow us to experience his wit but he’s often kept in the shadows just enough to make us wonder what the hell he is doing in there. It’s just the right amount of reserve. He’s also framed creepily by Schlesinger and DP Amir Mokri (Man of Steel, Lord of War, Freejack, Bad Boys II) in such a way that he doesn’t have to do much. Whether sitting stoically with an insect between his fingers (later parodied in Jim Carrey’s The Cable Guy) or in a parked car in a dark garage, Keaton can produce a lot of crazy with a single look. A look he made so cool with Batman that gives off a completely different energy when it’s coming from the guy in apartment 2B.

Then there’s the other side of the yin-yang with Drake’s abrasive, over-the-top, semi-whiney character blowing his cool each time Carter bests him. Anyone would be stressed in this situation but this guy unravels as if the messiest thing he’d ever been through before was his fanny pack. At each turn, he seems to make the situation a thousand times worse to prove he’s the better man. In one moment, he’s screaming at his lawyer (in another amazing performance by a blunt Laurie Metcalf) in the courthouse hallway and in another has a direct hand in the miscarriage of their child when Patty intervenes as he’s trying to fight a car with a crowbar.

This, paired with the revelation of just what a true to the core total despicable asshole Carter is, leaves us to find the true hero of the story…..Patty. Surrounded by either dumb dumbs, sketchy characters or police officers telling her to move on, Patty takes things into her own hands in a surprise twist. She gives us someone likable to root for at a time the film desperately needs it and puts together a cunning plan for revenge that is well-conceived and satisfying.

All this leads to a well-set-up final set piece that kind of reminds me of the home invasion sequence at the end of 1990’s Fear starring Mark Wahlberg. In that film, tensions had escalated to a point where nobody was hiding their true intentions anymore. David (Wahlberg) showed up with his crew with full intent on pure violence. There was nothing else left. Just as well here as Patty had just countered Carter in such a way that the only thing left was violence.

We all know what’s coming as Patty floats about the house working on getting their lives back together nail by nail (complete with obvious foreshadowing involving a faulty nail gun) as an incapacitated Drake lays on the couch smiling like the idiot he is. Loud grunge music plays as the camera starts to tease us with all the places Carter could be in the home; a slow zoom-in on the area behind the clothes in the closet; a literal cat jump scare. Finally, we get our final face-off moment. It’s Melanie Griffith fighting for her life in the face of an extremely talkative Michael Keaton who is undoubtedly there to take the next step in his crime career and do some murder.

The overly conventional way things wrap up aside, one of the more interesting aspects of Pacific Heights is that they never had to oversell it. We didn’t need to see Carter Hayes pulling dead hookers out of his trunk or give him a body count of three to four background characters. He was refreshing as a villain because he wasn’t a bloodthirsty headcase or an unintimidating white-collar crime artist afraid to get his hands dirty. He was simply a total and unequivocal asshole who looked at other human beings as things to be bled dry. And eventually, as life tends to do, he finally ran into someone who wasn’t having that shit.

Pacific Heights may fall into a lot of the same old ’90s thriller tropes (some of which I rather enjoy) but it has just enough quirky tendencies that it’s enjoyable in its very own way. The sheer gall of our villain to disrespect someone so deeply by inhabiting their very home is fascinating. So is the idea that it’s Michael Keaton doing it. There’s just something really fun about watching a big name in Hollywood who’s unafraid to take on the role of a despicable psychopath.

You can check out Pacific Heights on Tubi, Peacock and Vudu now.