Review of Suburbicon (2017) by John M — 18 Feb 2018

The darker side of the suburbs. So the year is 1959, and a family has just experienced a home invasion. Things may not be exactly as they seem, and the very white neighborhood that they live in begins to self-destruct when the first black family moves in.

Even from the trailer from this, I could tell this had a Coen brothers flair to it. While they aren't behind the camera (it's George Clooney), they did pen the script to this, so of course it had my interest.

Suburbicon bombed so hard at the box office that it was already out of theaters when I went to go look for a show time. I had to wait for the home market, and while I appreciated bits and pieces of this, it is not too hard to see why this failed.

While Clooney is doing his best Coen impression, the fact remains that his last name is not Coen. When you break it down, you can kind of see why the Coens didn't want to direct this, because it is kind of all over the place.

It really is these two different movies that are spliced together, but only intersect on rare occasions. The much more interesting story is this sordid family affair, but we keep cutting away to these angry white people losing their minds to the point of inciting riots, and they don't exactly complement each other.

The acting is decent in this, and Oscar Isaac is excellent like he usually is in a very small part, but the thing about Suburbicon is that everybody in this is a terrible person with dark secrets. Everyone is unlikable, and that is when it hit me: you're not actually supposed to be able to relate to anyone here.

That way, when there are rather large repercussions, you don't really mind because they actually deserve it when you break it down. This is satire to be sure, but when I got to the end of the film, I'm really not sure what it was saying or even what the point was if I am being honest.

Everybody is horrible and needs to die? I suppose. I would never call Suburbicon a successful movie, but it did keep my attention, and there were a few things that I did like throughout, which was largely due to the Coen's writing.

This isn't really a movie I can say that you need to rush out and watch, unfortunately.