The Chumscrubber

Dean Stiffle (Jamie Bell) lives with his parents in an affluent suburb, where perfect facades convey an equally perfect impression of the lives behind them. But this supposed idyll is shaken when the death of a teenage drug dealer, who is also Dean's best friend, sets off a chain of fatal events. Three classmates are mainly responsible for this, as they try to get their hands on Troy's drug stash via Dean. They kidnap a boy they think is Dean's little brother, but who is actually the son of the local police officer. And that's when the problems really start... “The Chumscrubber” exposes the American illusion of the perfect suburb as a world of emotional emptiness. The film shows how both young people and adults (including Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, Carrie-Ann Moss, Rita Wilson) live in a society that replaces genuine communication with consumption, medication, and self-optimization. Troy's suicide is not understood as a warning sign, but is suppressed – a symbol of the collective inability to deal with pain and loss. This culminates in individuality and empathy being sacrificed in favor of the apparent preservation of harmony. “A slyly funny satire on the ‘American way of life,’ whose potential lies in the ironic refraction of the generation conflict, whereby the young protagonists are denied the right to rebellion because they too experiment with escapist lifestyles.” (Lexikon des Internationalen Films)