fionapph I love the understatement of the whole thing. It's almost as if the writers are turning Goth on its head. The suburban banality is what keeps you hooked in. The deadpan irony and the gags are terrific, the dialogue is laugh-a-minute, thanks to awesome writing and marvellous delivery from the actors. Sound track is great, the set-ups are fun. It's absolutely my sort of movie. I love the comedy of it. There's enough drama to carry the story apart from the Gothic element and the characters are believable. I like the pacing. It's also clever because it deals with a very contemporary issue of unemployed youngsters not leaving home, but in an original way. I'd love to know what premise the writers started with. The oxymoron of Suburban Gothic is the key to it. I mean, no crypts? No black eyeliner? And we get jump scares too.

Irishchatter I have always thought this film had involved the best actors in the world. They have done the sarcasm so brilliantly that you would just laugh out loud to yourself or even be curious if you think what they meant! Raymond had that caring personality for his family including his sexy goth friend Becca and his stupid uptight father. I really liked his scarf collection, they really suit the actor and character. He should appear for a men fashion magazine, just saying. Kat Dennings as Becca looked really pretty in Gothic style. They look really suits her, she should keep that style more often! I also liked how they gave her a bad girl attitude. She probably hid her feelings for Raymond and honestly they are so cute together! I'm glad there was romance involved in the ending.Ray Wise was brilliant playing the dad. He's a character who you would love to hate but deep down, he wants his son to do well like any other father would. He kinda reminds me of my own father. It was too bad the mother and himself divorced but you have to admit, he was pretty much a control freak. This movie will break your jaws from laughter, go watch it!

white_water According to the director Richard Bates Jr. his sophomore film is best viewed at "a slumber party in your parents basement with all your best, weirdest friends." I agree with that statement.Richard Bates Jr. got the attention of many horror geeks with his debut Excision in 2012. Much deserving that, I'd say Excision may be my favorite modern horror movie. While Excision got as much critical acclaim as that type of movie could get, it wasn't really a hit and Bates was back in the square one again. Bates got frustrated & depressed. I don't want take too much space writing about it but I thought the making of & the story of how this movie got started is really interesting. If you're interested I recommend listening to interviews with the director online, there's lots of interesting stories about it.Suburban Gothic started out as a super dark and bleak ghost story. Bates was just miserable and depressed while he wrote it but at some point he got the idea that maybe he should not do something miserable when he was so depressed himself. Suburban Gothic got rewritten as a comedy, Bates was not miserable anymore and now that I've seen the movie, I'm glad they made it a comedy.A big trend with horror comedy is often making fun of the genre tropes and being self aware. Doing that can either be really funny or really cheap and lazy. I'm honestly kinda sick of that so it's refreshing to see a horror comedy that isn't self aware. It's not making fun of ghosts or ghost related movies. It's just a fun horror comedy. What I most loved about it is how seemingly innocent it felt like. Even if there's lots of dirty jokes the movie is free from gore and doesn't have any tits. Weird, I'm saying that's a good thing? Apparently that was one of the reasons why Bates struggled to get funding for the movie. The studios wanted a movie with sex and gore.Suburban Gothic is clearly very low budget and it's really too bad that after doing Excision Bates actually had to work with even less money on his next movie. Studios should be throwing money at this guy. He works very well with the low budget and I've seen movies with bigger budget that look ten times worse. It's a very good looking movie, Bates already has a style of his own. Even the effects look very good, I was prepared for some really cheap stuff considering the budget.Anyway, it's Friday night.Why aren't you watching this movie right now? It's a very fun horror comedy that will make you smile and might make you feel like a kid watching Fright Night again.

your crowbar I went to see Excision, Richard Bates Jr.'s debut, knowing almost nothing about it. All I had read was a 5-star Empire review. I'm so glad I trusted said review: Excision is a funny, original, sometimes horrifying, and also disturbing film. I'll never forget its ending (a true rarity: a profoundly sad ending in a horror movie). And it made me very excited about future films from writer and director Bates.Well, to put it mildly, Suburban Gothic is a disappointment. The goal here is obviously to pay homage to John Waters' trash/filthy/defying humor (no wonder Waters himself shows up in one of the best scenes of the film), but the result seems more like not-really-inspired Waters (Cry-Baby, Pecker) than excellent Waters (Polyester, Pink Flamingos). Close-up shots of feces, vomit, and sperm add nothing to the story - and unfortunately most of the humor of the film doesn't go much higher than this.But it'd be unfair to classify Suburban Gothic as just scatological humor. There are some truly funny scenes, Matthew Gray Gubler is charming as the protagonist, and he makes a good team with Kat Dennings. (The cast is the best thing about the film, including Leland Palmer himself, Ray Wise, and Barbara Niven as the parents) But the story is so generic I couldn't believe it came from the same man who wrote Excision. There's not a single scary moment - which wouldn't be a problem if the film was a riot, like Shaun of the Dead. Unfortunately (for me), I wasn't laughing nearly as much as the girl behind me, who was almost dying of laughter every time Gubler gave a high-pitched scream - and he does it a lot. I guess I'll have to wait for the next film from Bates. Or watch Excision again.