# The 18 Best Films About American Suburbia

> Eighteen films that treat the cul-de-sac as a crime scene, a punchline or a haunted house, depending on who is holding the camera. Rank them and see what your neighbours think.

*By YPB Team · Published September 15, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-18-best-films-about-american-suburbia*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Blue Velvet** — score 1000/1000
   David Lynch's 1986 mystery that starts with a severed ear found in a quiet neighbourhood field.
2. **American Beauty** — score 889/1000
   Sam Mendes's 1999 Best Picture winner about a father unravelling behind a tidy suburban front lawn.
3. **Pleasantville** — score 694/1000
   A 1998 fantasy in which two teenagers land inside a black-and-white 1950s sitcom town.
4. **The Ice Storm** — score 630/1000
   Ang Lee's 1997 drama following two Connecticut families through a 1973 Thanksgiving weekend.
5. **The Stepford Wives** — score 621/1000
   A 1975 thriller about a photographer who notices the local women are all impossibly content.
6. **Safe** — score 621/1000
   Todd Haynes's 1995 film about a San Fernando Valley housewife who becomes allergic to her own environment.
7. **Donnie Darko** — score 555/1000
   A 2001 cult film about a sleepwalking teenager, a jet engine and a man in a rabbit suit.
8. **Edward Scissorhands** — score 555/1000
   Tim Burton's 1990 fable dropping an unfinished creation into a street of pastel houses.
9. **A Serious Man** — score 555/1000
   The Coen brothers' 2009 film about a physics professor in a 1967 Minnesota subdivision losing everything at once.
10. **Ordinary People** — score 481/1000
   Robert Redford's 1980 Best Picture winner about a wealthy family failing to speak after a son's death.
11. **Far from Heaven** — score 481/1000
   Todd Haynes's 2002 melodrama about a 1957 Connecticut housewife whose marriage and friendships break along race and sexuality.
12. **E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial** — score 481/1000
   Steven Spielberg's 1982 film about a stranded alien hidden in a California tract house.
13. **Little Children** — score 397/1000
   Todd Field's 2006 drama about adultery, shame and a registered sex offender in a New England suburb.
14. **The Graduate** — score 397/1000
   Mike Nichols's 1967 comedy about a graduate drifting between a pool, a party and Mrs Robinson.
15. **Halloween** — score 397/1000
   John Carpenter's 1978 horror film that put a masked killer on an ordinary Illinois sidewalk.
16. **The Virgin Suicides** — score 299/1000
   Sofia Coppola's 1999 debut about five sisters watched from across a Michigan street.
17. **Revolutionary Road** — score 299/1000
   A 2008 adaptation of Richard Yates's novel about a 1950s couple suffocating on a Connecticut street.
18. **Poltergeist** — score 185/1000
   A 1982 horror film about a planned community built on ground the developers should have left alone.

Tags: movies, usa, classics, suburbia