Suburbicon (2017)

“When the Trailer Sells You One Movie and the Theater Hands You Another”


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🎬 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

“Oh, you thought this was a quirky Coen Brothers comedy about a well-mannered dad in over his head? Cute. What you actually get is Matt Damon playing the sleaziest PTA dad alive in the poster child for lying trailers. Hope you kept your receipt.”

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📝 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

If you only watched the trailers, you’d think Suburbicon was the long-lost sibling of Fargo — a quirky, dark comedy about mobsters, small-town crime, and Matt Damon losing his cool while Oscar Isaac slithers in as a sleazy insurance man. That’s what we all paid for. That’s what the ads screamed at us.

What we actually got is a tonal train wreck of two completely separate movies smashed together:

1. A lifeless, joyless “murder for insurance money” story that’s already been done a hundred times better elsewhere.


2. A clumsily-inserted racism subplot about the first Black family in town, which feels like a completely different movie shoved in because Clooney wanted to make a Point™.



Neither storyline feeds the other. Neither is developed well. And together, they cancel each other out, leaving us with nothing but a hollow, frustrating experience.

Ahhh, so basically it’s Trump’s America — got it. Eh eh eh eh im probably gonna get lynched because of this joke.



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🎥 Trailer Lies vs. Reality

Here’s where the gloves come off. The trailers flat-out lied to us.

What the trailer promised:

A Coen Brothers-style crime caper.

Matt Damon as a seemingly normal suburban dad who gets dragged into mobster dealings.

Quirky humor and dark comedy in a candy-colored 1950s setting.

Oscar Isaac strutting in, chewing scenery, and being a key player.

A fun time — dark, sure, but fun.


What we actually got:

No mobster caper, just a boring insurance fraud/murder plot.

Matt Damon not dragged into crime, but already a murderer from the start.

Zero humor. Dead serious, grim tone.

Oscar Isaac? In and out in ten minutes, like a cameo.

Instead of a clever Coen-esque romp, we get endless racism scenes that go nowhere and feel tacked on.


It’s the definition of bait-and-switch. They sold us a black comedy thriller, then handed us a PSA about racism mixed with the dullest noir ever written. If the marketing had been honest, people would’ve walked in prepared. But no — we were conned into buying a ticket for a completely different movie.

And if by this point you’re wondering wait, I thought that the trailer was setting me on a dad whose game revenge for the murder of his wife, and he’s a clumsy dad. Who’s who’s well mannered and way over his head, then, i’m sorry to say that is not the movie at all. They really lied in the marketing. You were bamboozled.


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🎭 Character Rundown

Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon): A protagonist with all the charisma of cardboard. He’s not a bumbling dad caught up in a plot — he’s just a killer. Instantly unlikable. Damon has phoned it in before, but here it’s like his soul left set on day one.

Margaret / Rose (Julianne Moore): Evil twin cliché 101. Moore tries, but the script gives her nothing except “smile creepily and stir the coffee.”

Bud Cooper (Oscar Isaac): The one shining light. Charismatic, slimy, fun. And then the movie yanks him away after ten minutes. Why even bother?

The Meyers Family: Deserved their own movie. Instead, they’re reduced to a backdrop of racist neighbors screaming and banging pots. Their story barely intersects with the Lodges, making the whole subplot feel exploitative.



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⏱️ Pacing / Episode Flow

The pacing is torture. You sit there waiting for the “dark comedy” to kick in, but it never does. The murder plot limps along. The racism subplot dominates screentime without payoff. By the halfway point, you realize you’ve been conned into sitting through two stitched-together screenplays that don’t belong in the same universe.


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✅ Pros

Oscar Isaac’s ten minutes of screen time.

The pastel, plastic 1950s production design.

The idea of what this movie could’ve been if it stuck to the tone of its trailer.



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❌ Cons

Trailer promised one movie, delivered another.

The two plotlines never connect — it’s literally two different films colliding.

Matt Damon’s performance is flatter than the Midwestern landscape.

Heavy-handed racism subplot is mishandled and adds nothing.

Not funny, not thrilling, not suspenseful.

Completely joyless, hollow, and forgettable.



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💭 Final Thoughts

Suburbicon isn’t just bad. It’s insulting. The marketing duped audiences into expecting a black comedy crime thriller and instead delivered a bleak, disjointed mess. Clooney’s direction is lifeless, the Coens’ influence is nowhere to be found, and the whole thing reeks of wasted potential.

When a movie actively makes you angry for wasting your time and money, you know something went very, very wrong.


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⭐ Rating

0/10 – A suburban nightmare for all the wrong reasons.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning

From here on out, full spoilers for Suburbicon.


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🔪 Spoilers (aka: Where My Rant Level Goes Nuclear)

So the “big reveal” is… Gardner (Matt Damon) and his sister-in-law Margaret (Julianne Moore) plotted to kill Rose (Margaret’s twin) for insurance money. Wow. Groundbreaking. Haven’t seen that plot before. Except… everywhere.

Margaret slips into Rose’s place like a soap opera villain. Gardner spirals into paranoia. And the mobsters — who we thought would be a huge part of the story from the trailer — are barely involved. This is not a crime comedy, it’s a lifeless murder-for-insurance snoozefest.

Then there’s the Meyers family subplot. The first Black family moves into town. Racism explodes. Neighbors scream, riot, smash windows, even set up camp outside their home. And for what? It never intersects with Gardner’s plot. They don’t meet. They don’t connect. Their entire storyline exists to say “look how racist the 1950s were.” No sh*t, movie. Thanks for the lecture. But when it’s glued onto a completely separate story, it just feels exploitative and cheap.

Oscar Isaac shows up as Bud Cooper, the only person in this movie with a pulse. He starts sniffing out Gardner’s lies, and you think, “Finally, here we go. The movie’s alive!” Nope. Ten minutes later, he’s gone. Dead. Wasted. The movie kills off its only interesting character because apparently fun wasn’t on the menu.

The ending? Gardner poisons Margaret. Gardner dies. Nicky, his son, is left staring at the wreckage of his family. The Meyers kid stares back. The end. No resolution. No connection. Nothing. Just a giant middle finger to the audience who wanted either a clever thriller or a meaningful drama. We got neither.

This wasn’t just a bad movie. This was false advertising packaged as “cinema.”

So yeah, that’s what we ended up getting, can any of y’all see why people like me walked away disappointed. Please don’t go looking for this movie. It’s just not worth your time.