There is something about the notion of “suburbia” that has given way to a wide allotment of cultural analysis. From serious academic discourse to the dime-a-dozen romantic comedy, the suburban way of life has become an entirely new template and a relatively recent trope that has integrated into the cultural consciousness.
One of the most potent cinematic portraits of suburbia was the much-lauded Sam Mendes film, American Beauty, and as acute and devastating as this film is, Hollywood has gifted audiences with innumerable riffs on the tropes. These are the 10 best lesser-known suburban satires – films that take perceptions of suburban life and create an artistic statement of some kind.
Vivarium (2019)
The most recent addition to the micro-genre, Vivarium spends much of its runtime straddling the lines between horror, comedy, and political allegory. It’s a tricky balancing act that the indie flick manages to, for the most part, pull off with style and aplomb.
Much of the film’s success comes from the wonderfully understated performances from Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg as a young couple who become trapped in a Twilight Zone-esque labyrinth of cookie-cutter suburbia. The film is weird and only gets darker as it progresses, but it is endlessly compelling and does have a thing or two on its mind about American life.
The ‘Burbs (1989)
Joe Dante’s 1989 cult classic is by no means a cinematic masterwork. However, it is a funny and surprisingly dark mainstream comedy that plays up some of the most cliched aspects of suburban living.
Tom Hanks is good in the lead as a man who becomes suspicious that his suburban neighbors are part of a sinister cult and murdering members of the community. The film’s unique blend of horror and almost slapstick humor is an interesting one that leads to a particularly strange finale.
Neighbors (2014)
A film like Neighbors shouldn’t be as funny as it is, but every once in a while, a comedy comes along that has an almost indescribable charm.
A silly but endearing comedy hit that takes broad jabs at the notion of moving to the suburbs to quietly start a family, Neighbors has a secret weapon in the comedic chops of both Rose Byrne and Zac Efron, both of whom match and outshine headliner, Seth Rogen. A lovable and goofy breeze of a satire, Neighbors was one of the best comedies of its year.
Excision (2012)
Where to even begin with this film? Truly a singular experience, the underseen Excision is a black comedy about a young woman coming of age in a modern suburban landscape. Alternately laugh-out-loud funny and vomit-inducing, the debut feature from Richard Bates Jr. is a powerful skewering of iconoclastic expectations placed on children born to privilege.
AnnaLynne McCord is a genuine revelation as the lead character and a strange person who longs to be a surgeon as much as she wants to have sex for the first time. It’s supremely weird and objectively genius.
Happiness (1998)
Todd Solondz has made a career out of making subversive films about America’s upper-middle class. His 1998 film Happiness is definitely one of his more startling and well-constructed efforts. It’s a weird collage of people’s lives in the suburban world as they spiral into bizarro acts of depravity.
Perhaps the film’s most infamous storyline centers around a suburban dad who is also a pedophile, played with top-notch creepiness by Dylan Baker. It is bold writing and exquisite filmmaking and takes a magnifying glass to what can sometimes be going on beneath what seems to be one’s ‘normal’ exterior.
The Ref (1994)
Instead of focusing on all the Christmas traditions that supposedly bring nuclear families together, Ted Demme’s 1994 caper instead focuses on the fights, prejudices, grudges, and general toxicities that everyone who has come home for the holidays can relate to on some level.
Dennis Leary stars as a foul-mouthed criminal who breaks into the suburban home on Christmas Eve. The script is whip-smart and unapologetic in its raunchiness and diatribes on the emptiness of the “American Dream.” This is the perfect anti-feel-good Christmas movie for the next time your aunt is talking about some stupid nonsense.
Pleasantville (1998)
Writer/director Gary Ross made one of the most underrated movies of the 90s with this satire of 1950s suburbia. When two 90s siblings are sucked into a sitcom from yesteryear, they begin to challenge the status quo, which in turn begins to physically alter their new world.
It is a brilliantly conceived and written project that uses comedy and subtlety to poke fun at the conventions of nostalgia. Particularly wonderful is Jeff Daniels as a lonely bachelor who discovers the passion within him.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Less a straightforward satirizing of 1980s suburbia and more of a weird warp of the entire concept, David Lynch’s seminal masterpiece is a slice of cinematic strangeness that is as confounding as it is iconic.
When a severed human ear is found in a perfectly mowed lawn, a young man is sent spiraling down a rabbit hole into a dangerous world of crime and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Lynch is simultaneously able to roast the contemporary setting while rendering it so distant that it is unrecognizable. It’s a one of a kind film from a one of a kind filmmaker.
Get Out (2017)
So much has been said and written about Jordan Peele’s instant classic that there are almost no superlatives left to give. There isn’t anything in the film that doesn’t work, and it has the sheen of a perfectly manifested vision that lands like a ton of bricks with every piece of social commentary.
Peele uses the insular suburban landscape to portray greater horrors going on in our world, and it is a damning mirror of the society that created it.
The Truman Show (1998)
A film that came at just the right time, the Jim Carrey vehicle proved to the world that the goofball had serious acting chops while also offering a phenomenal riff on the public’s obsession with reality shows that promote people who live perfectly average lives.
The rise of the reality TV format would go on to inspire countless parodies and satires, but it is this film that seems to exclusively land on some unspoken truth about both suburban life and the way voyeurism is integrated into the human condition.
