Horror In The Neighbourhood: 10 Scary Movies In Suburbia

Horror in the suburbs. It’s a popular motif within scary movies, popularised by John Carpenter taking audiences on a terrifying journey to Haddonfield where psychopath Michael Myers was slicing and dicing babysitters in Halloween.

In horror cinema, by the 1970s and 1980s, the suburbs had taken over from the gothic mansions of Dracula to immerse us in a macabre reality steeped in a recognisable aesthetic that felt very close to home.

Preceding Carpenter’s Halloween, it’s no surprise that American society had been rocked by the deaths caused by Ted Bundy, the Manson Family, and the Hillside Strangler. The Son of Sam and Jonestown also happened in the same decade and Michael Myers’ first appearance coincided with the year John Wayne Gacy confessed to killing 33 people.

Suburbia was being terrorised by unexpected perpetrators. Our neighbours were killing us.

The varying depictions of suburbia in American movies

Prevalent in this very Americanised genre is the idea of the family unit – particularly made up of a married couple, from a middle class background (allowing them to leave the nearby cities for the more upmarket out-of-town communities) and often having two or three children with a relatively even mix of genders.

This has formed the backdrop of either criticism of the American Dream (The Ice Storm), celebration of it (It’s a Wonderful Life) or satirical homage (Pleasantville, The Truman Show) while the breakdown of the family unit has formed the basis of other films such as The Ref, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and American Beauty.

For those suburban inhabitants that are either unmarried or too young to have children and settle down, the focus is often on the mundanity of suburban life (Suburbia, The Goonies, Mallrats, Clerks, Dazed and Confused). This also converts to bored, seemingly happy married men and women, who seek adventure and excitement beyond their daily routine, often aggrandising triviality (The ‘Burbs, Arlington Road).

From science-fiction (The Stepford Wives) to horror (Nightmare on Elm Street) to comedy (The ‘Burbs), suburbia is, like all those who move to its idyllic pastures wanting a better life, what you make of it.

Horror in the neighbourhood: 10 scary movies set in suburbia

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) IMAGE: (c) New Line Cinema

Get Out

Dir. Jordan Peele (2018)

A film that defies distinction, Jordan Peele’s smart, satirical horror-comedy’s success at the Oscars is a great example of the intelligence many movies of the genre possess. Sadly, so many aren’t given the credit.

Bringing together themes of race, identity and class into a fun Stepford Wives-style plot that features elements of science-fiction and horror, Get Out is memorable, in part, through its injection of refreshing contemporary social commentary into familiar genre tropes.

Paranormal Activity

Dir. Oren Peli (2007)

Ghosts are perfect fodder for the found footage genre as director Oren Peli proved. Paranormal Activity, which sees a couple’s tranquil home life disrupted by a malevolent spirit, enjoyed phenomenal success at the box office, striking a chord with audiences and winning acclaim and adoration through word-of-mouth in a similar way to The Blair Witch Project.

And rightly so, given the director’s smartly orchestrated scares and tension-filled build-up to a haunting climax. The performances are also a cut above the usual level you see in the genre.

A Nightmare On Elm Street

Dir. Wes Craven (1984)

When we think about suburban horror feeling “real”, it’s perhaps not surprising to hear that Wes Craven was partly inspired to make A Nightmare on Elm Street by reports of Khmer refugees dying in their sleep during the 1970s.

The men, aged between 19 and 57, had fled Cambodia and relocated to the United States. It was here that some reported having such disturbing nightmares that they refused to sleep. When they eventually fell to sleep they died. The phenomena was called Asian Death Syndrome with doctors likening it to sudden unexplained death syndrome.

In the film, suburbia is terrorised by Freddy Krueger, a child molester who was hunted down by the local Elm Street parents after he beat the court system on a technicality. They trapped him in his basement and lit his house on fire and then watched him burn. But he comes back as a malevolent entity who appears to the parents’ children in their dreams, murdering them as they sleep.

Halloween

Dir. John Carpenter (1978)

In 1997, Wes Craven released Scream. It was a film targeted at the youth market – a market that hadn’t seen a quality slasher film released for years. That said, not many who saw and loved Craven’s homage to the slasher genre knew much about the work it was referencing. But the film, and the success of the sequels and 1990s/2000s slashers, are in debt to one of John Carpenter’s greatest films Halloween.

It isn’t the first slasher film but it is the best. Alfred Hitchcock made the Granddaddy of the genre with Psycho, and this was followed in the early 1970s by Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas which were both hugely influential on Carpenter. He deconstructed the template which had made those films successful and set the conventions which Scream would so shrewdly mock and simultaneously celebrate.

Halloween is so effective because it depicts a monster which is at once unstoppable and seemingly without reason. Similarly, it was what made the violence in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so alarming – not just the ferocity of it but the fact it lacked motivation and therefore reason. It was terror born out of what can only be described as undiluted, indefinable, and deep-rooted evil. Halloween benefits from its monster – Michael Myers – one of the most iconic antagonists ever envisaged.

Poltergeist

Dir. Tobe Hooper (1982)

The Tobe Hooper-directed horror film about a family terrorised by supernatural beings who threaten to kidnap the children is one of a number of great haunted house films of the 1980s.

The film follows the experiences of the Freeling family after they move into a new home that, unknown to them, was built on an ancient Indian burial ground.

Heather O’Rourke as Carol Anne, the Freeling’s youngest daughter, is the pale-faced sweet and innocent child who becomes the target of the evil spirits that plague the house.

The film doesn’t overdo the use of special-effects in its playful but frightening depiction of a modern haunted house. Zelda Rubenstein also needs singling out as the unforgettable squeaky-voiced spirit medium Tangina Barrons.

The ‘Burbs

Dir. Joe Dante (1989)

Tom Hanks’ cul-de-sac is being invaded by strange neighbors who appear to be digging graves at the dead of night. Are they really hiding dead bodies or do they just enjoy night time landscaping?

Hanks’ anarchic, over-caffeinated performance in Joe Dante’s wonderful suburbia-in-peril movie is an ideal conclusion to his 1980s output. As paranoia descends upon a sleepy neughborhood in nowheresville USA, the various inhabitants of this sleepy hamlet begin to suspect the mysterious newbies of an assortment of malevolent acts including burying people in their backyard.

Hanks begins as the voice of reason, the counter-balance to the conspiracy theorists. But as events get stranger, even his steady hand begins to shake. The Burbs remains Hanks’ finest film of the 1980s; an underrated satirical gem that possesses a rare combination of wit and self-awareness.

The Stepford Wives

Dir. Bryan Forbes (1975)

Welcome to the idyllic, sleepy suburb of Stepford. Women are obedient to their husbands, devoutly domesticated and robotically repetitive. When newcomer Katharine Ross moves to Stepford she begins to suspect that something may be very wrong with the town.

Her investigation leads to a terribly horrifying conclusion that involves the secretive Stepford Men’s Association. Called a chauvinistic dystopia, The Stepford Wives is a 1970s satire on the prevailing gender roles of suburban life at the time.

Scream

Dir. Wes Craven (1996)

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson’s re-imagination of the slasher genre is perfectly brought to life by seasoned horror film veteran Wes Craven. The film turns stalk and slash conventions of their head whilst simultaneously celebrating the movies that inspired their creation.

Nods to fellow suburban horror movies like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street are deliciously interweaved into this sparkling attack on the senses, as Woodsboro High School students come under attack from a knife-wielding killer who has a penchant for scary movies.

You know you are witnessing something unique when the recognised star of the film – Drew Barrymore – finds herself a victim in the opening pre-credit sequence. From then on, all expectations are out the window.

It: Chapter One & Chapter Two

Dir. Andy Muschietti (2017)

Director Andy Muschietti had previously proven his credentials with the fun horror Mama in 2013. Here, he underlines them. He’s playful with his star – undeniably the villain of the piece, Pennywise the Dancing Clown – while reinforcing the beating heart of the story, that being the friendship that bonds the Loser’s Club.

For a novel the scale of Stephen King’s It, you have to refine the plot somehow and by concentrating on this unique, frightening coming of age tale, Muschietti gives us an emotionally evocative, entertaining thrill-ride that joyfully reminds of childhood imagination and those seemingly endless summers where memories are founded and unbreakable friendships made.

I See You

Dir. Adam Randall (2019)

What you can be sure of is that the film will surprise. There’s a false sense of security that director Adam Randall lures you into during the film’s opening few minutes. That feeling of certainty as conventional genre beats play out.

Devon Graye’s script even has the audacity to turn your attention away. This troubled family unit, with dad sleeping on the sofa, mum trying to make amends for an affair, and angry son ticking off the attributes of the stereotypical teenager, drifting into melodrama. But there are tricks up the sleeve of I See You. And once they start, they don’t stop until you’re breathlessly perusing the end credits.

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