A Troublesome Time in Suburbicon
The ideal neighbourhood and the ideal life is what is advertised in the fictional town of Suburbicon. A town with people from all over the United States, a town that has everything it can possibly need for everyone to be happy. Suburbicon is the ideal home for any family that is looking for a fresh start or simply a new place to live. What Surburbicon isn’t, though, is an engaging and unpredictable film, in fact, you can see the events in the town of Subrubicon well before they happen.
Suburbicon follows the story of Gardner who has a small family, just him, his wife who is in a wheelchair and his son Nicky. His life gets turned upside down when their home is invaded while his wife’s twin sister is in town and the robbers end up killing his wife in front of his son Nicky. What follows is a cover-up and the audience trying to figure out what happened and why the robbers killed his wife but in reality, it’s painfully obvious. After Gardner’s wife dies her twin sister ends up living with Gardner and Nicky.
Let’s start with the good part of the film, the film’s aesthetic is quite nice as it is very Dr Suess like ith all the houses and people looking the same in this 50’s perfect town if it was a rating lower and rhymed more one might call it plagiarism. The idea of the perfect town is portrayed at the start by an opening book dialogue that gets you ready and prepared for the film and what it’s going to be like. It’s a little funny and quite nice to watch as the design and look of everything works well in Suburbicon’s favour, however, thats, where it stops as good acting by Matt Damon, isn’t enough to stop you realising the story before you’re supposed to.
The events of Suburbicon are too obvious and too clear as when there is supposed to be a twist you’ve already seen it and therefore you don’t realise the twist happens. I’m not going to spoil the events of the film because someone reading this might still be surprised but I doubt it. The story is then changed because of it as it feels more like a children’s book gone dark with more murder and death instead of the more intense happy neighbourhood thriller it was supposed to be, somewhere along the way it is lost and that feeling of suspense can’t be retrieved. You don’t feel like you’re captivated in the story but instead, realise that you’re watching a movie that you feel like you’ve seen before.
I didn’t know too much about Suburbicon before seeing it, I only saw the trailer for it the day before and too be honest I wish I hadn’t. Some films these days have great trailers that are filled with misdirects for what happens in the film but a lot are simply trying to sell you the movie and the only way they can do that is showing you a short version of it. This is Suburbicon’s problem as I saw the trailer, like most people going to see it would’ve, and therefore going in I knew too much because there isn’t enough going on in this small town that you can’t already figure out before the movie or before it happens in the movie. Unfortunately for the real estate agents in Suburbicon I will not be buying any property there.