First: the trailer does not match the film. I thought it would be Wes Anderson meets Last House of the Left, and many people will walk in to the theater expecting a zany, if dark, revenge comedy and be utterly disappointed with the serious social commentary picture this film actually is.
Suburbicon is presented as an ideal, modern society in a nicely wrapped, suburban package. It's clean, it's new, there is no poverty, and nothing really bad happens there, just good clean American values.
This is where the Gardner family lives. Hardworking husband with a good job, loving stay at home wife, little baseball-loving Nicky, their son, and a doting auntie. A perfect little family.
But there's a feeling of Stepford-wrongness that just keeps increasing.
A peaceable black family moves in to the white enclave and the friendly neighborhood swiftly decays into a screaming pit of racist violence.
Meanwhile, just across the street, truly evil acts are being ignored.
The Gardner's are held hostage in their home by thugs, and what seems like a tragedy is just the lid coming off a rotting pile of putrid garbage that keeps getting deeper and deeper.
While the minorities are hounded and blamed for every wrong by the mobs, the nice, white family literally murders someone in the streets--and no one notices or cares.
Heavy-handed with the biblical symbolism, and shoving the blatantly foiled families in your face, the film would have been workable, though smug with itself, if the film makers hadn't given in to the temptation of the obviously symbolic ending that turns the film from edgy and disturbing to preachy and overbearing.
It's upsetting how close this film comes to being one of the truly great movies, while still falling so short.
Suburbicon is presented as an ideal, modern society in a nicely wrapped, suburban package. It's clean, it's new, there is no poverty, and nothing really bad happens there, just good clean American values.
This is where the Gardner family lives. Hardworking husband with a good job, loving stay at home wife, little baseball-loving Nicky, their son, and a doting auntie. A perfect little family.
But there's a feeling of Stepford-wrongness that just keeps increasing.
A peaceable black family moves in to the white enclave and the friendly neighborhood swiftly decays into a screaming pit of racist violence.
Meanwhile, just across the street, truly evil acts are being ignored.
The Gardner's are held hostage in their home by thugs, and what seems like a tragedy is just the lid coming off a rotting pile of putrid garbage that keeps getting deeper and deeper.
While the minorities are hounded and blamed for every wrong by the mobs, the nice, white family literally murders someone in the streets--and no one notices or cares.
Heavy-handed with the biblical symbolism, and shoving the blatantly foiled families in your face, the film would have been workable, though smug with itself, if the film makers hadn't given in to the temptation of the obviously symbolic ending that turns the film from edgy and disturbing to preachy and overbearing.
It's upsetting how close this film comes to being one of the truly great movies, while still falling so short.