Film > Cult

Written and directed by Penelope Spheeris, creator of the definitive documentary on the Los Angeles's punk-rock scene, Decline of Western Civilization. Suburbia - with great performances by young amateur actors - is a gritty, revealing and provocative depiction of punk sub-culture in the early 1980s. Escaping from a broken home and an alcoholic father, teenager Evan (Bill Coyne) and his younger brother fall in with a group of young punks who call themselves 'The Rejected'. These runaways - based on Spheeris’ own observations of teen delinquents - hold on to each other like family, living in abandoned houses away from the society that despises them, including a local vigilante group that blames them for all the ills in the community. A highly realistic portrait of the social distintegration underpinning punk-rock culture in the early 80s.