My Neighbor Totoro (1988) on Netflix

Plot summary

On a warm, sunny day, 10-year-old Satsuki (English: Dakota Fanning; Japanese: Noriko Hidaka) and 4-year-old Mei (English: Elle Fanning; Japanese: Chika Sakamoto) Kusakabe drive with their father, Tatsuo (English: Tim Daly; Japanese: Shigesato Itoi), along a rural road towards their new home. The girls are excited about the move since it will bring them closer to their mother, Yasuko (English: Lea Salonga; Japanese: Sumi Shimamoto), who is ill in the hospital (it is implied that she has tuberculosis).

Their house is old and falling apart in places, but the girls find it charming and set out immediately to explore. They open all the windows and doors before daring to venture up the stairs into the attic. Faint rustling is heard in the darkness above before an acorn falls down the steps. Intrigued, the girls go up and yell at the darkness. When nothing responds, Satsuki runs to the opposite end of the attic to open the window as Mei notices dark, fuzzy things in the wall, staring at them intently. Satsuki goes back downstairs but Mei's curiosity is piqued. She reaches a tentative finger into a crack in the wall and startles a mess of black sootballs, one of which she is able to capture between her hands. Back downstairs, she runs into Granny (English: Pat Carroll; Japanese: Tanie Kitabayashi), an elderly next-door neighbor who's been watching over the house.