Day 325 of the challenge! There’s a great, dark satire buried deep in Suburbicon…Maybe too deep for anyone to find.
Suburbicon has all the ingredients for something great! I mean, satirical pieces about the rotten core of suburbia aren’t anything new, but they have a special edginess to them that other films don’t. Throw in the the 50’s setting, and the accompanying…societal quirks (like the racial divide) of the time, and it’s game over! This should have been one helluva movie, but none of it’s many moving parts ever quite gel together to say or do something special. They’re all just..kinda there. Disappointing? Yea..
BUT Suburbicon does have a few things going for. It’s a slick looking flick with some fairly effective moments of high tension, and both Matt Damon and Julianne Moore (in a dual role) knock it out of the park. But then again, there’s no real surprise there, right? What was a surprise was Oscar Issac, who shows up fairly late into the movie and steals the show in one of the best scenes!
While it doesn’t really work as a whole, I found plenty to love with Suburbicon. There are much worse movies to watch out there. There are much better ones too.