Review: Suburbicon Has A Very Simple Story To Tell, But Wastes 105 Minutes Telling It
- Nov 2, 2017
- 2 min read
Sure, George Clooney's previous forays into directing weren't exactly grand successes. Even the most recognisable titles, The Monuments Men and The Ides Of March, are only sitting at sixes and sevens on IMDb. But I still expected more out of this Clooney-directed, Damon-helmed and Moore-supported Coen satire script. This was my first mistake. The second one, of course, was agreeing to review it. And my final mistake was paying to go see it.
Here's the plot as it happens, more or less. Some African-American people move into Suburbicon, the ideal 1950s town, next to the Lodge family. Everyone has a problem with it. Meanwhile, the Lodge family are the victims of a home invasion, and Gardner's (Matt Damon) wife Rose (Julianne Moore) is killed.
Then after the funeral, there's a police lineup, and Gardner and his sister in law Margaret (also Julianne Moore) claim they don't recognise the home invaders / murderers, but Gardner's son Nicky (Noah Jupe) sneaks into the room and recognises them. Then someone from the insurance agency comes to visit Margaret to investigate red flags from a life insurance claim. When he returns that night, Gardner kills him. And it's all downhill from there.
I think this movie is trying to satirize thrillers, but it's incredibly predictable, and it's too confusing at the start to set it up properly. Gardner's motivations are completely unclear, there's no real explanation for why Julianne Moore plays two people or why they live in the same house, and it takes the entire movie to figure out what it's about. Not to mention the fact that the first scene sets up a completely different movie.
The African American neighbour controversy that plays out throughout the film is completely unrelated to anything else. And since the audience doesn't connect with any member of this one-dimensional and improperly introduced family, it feels like a waste of time once the audience realises that Suburbicon is actually not a film about racism.
I was going to suggest that this movie might have worked better as an episode of an anthology series, like if it was made retrofuturistic for Black Mirror. But the plot is incredibly simple and uninteresting. I don't want to spoil it in case some nutjobs reading this still want to go see it, but its """twist""" isn't exactly a shock. It also isn't enough to justify making a movie about. In fact, I have no idea why that movie was made at all. It's not a comedy, it's not a thriller, it's not good satire, and it's not worth even seeing for free.
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