There is some debate over what movie set in North Carolina is the best representation of North Carolina and I have to say that Blue Velvet (1986) was very accurate to an atmospherically evil smedium sized town in the tidewater region. Everything from the protagonist’s father being the proprietor of a very sad hardware store to the police incompetence & corruption to the drug trafficking to Kyle MacLachlan’s shitty little attic bedroom in his family home.
It’s always weird to look back on Lynch’s portrayal of Lumberton, NC as idyllic middle class/small town Americana given that it’s now the single most dangerous part of the state. It wasn’t at the time that Lynch set it there (and shot it in Wilmington), but it has become so in the time since
I don’t think it was actually that idyllic, I think there was a juxtaposition between the stylized dreamlike beauty and comfort of the memory of one’s hometown and the reality of it. Jeffrey’s dad collapsing while watering the flowers in the beginning is such a good way of setting the tone. Lynch explores the loss of innocence concept in his work so well. Jeffrey loses his innocence in his own hometown, his own rather mundane personal familial tragedy is abruptly overshadowed by something evil that has existed in the shadows for a long time in the same town, unacknowledged and ignored.
