10 Great Fictional Small Towns in American Movies

10 Small Fictional American Towns in Movies

Fictional stories have been set in every location imaginable, from made-up worlds to actual settings to places where human beings have yet to explore. A story’s setting can have as much significance as the plot and characters, and film has the advantage of being able to bring any world to life with its visual storytelling techniques. This is especially true of movies set in small towns.

American towns in particular give filmmakers a lot to play with in a limited space. They envelop the story with their isolated locations and intimate “everybody knows everybody” dynamics among their citizens. They can make a horror movie eerier, a comedy funnier, and a drama deeper.

Many films have created their own small towns in order to best serve their story with their own fictional history, landscape, and population. Below are 10 of my favorite fictional small U.S. towns in movies.

Winter River, CT – Beetlejuice (1988)

Despite being set in Connecticut, the town of East Corinth, Vermont actually filled in for Winter River in the movie Beetlejuice. Its standout features are its hilly roads and bright red covered bridge, setting a sleepy but cheery with its New England charm, perfect for the Maitlands who would prefer to spend their designated two weeks away from their hardware store cooped up in their house rather than tanning on a beach in Jamaica.

However, it’s a little too laid back for the newly transplanted Dietzes, who are used to the modern, fast-paced New York socialite lifestyle.

A Picturesque Landscape

This selection on the list is unique in that very little of the actual town is seen in the movie. Most of the film takes place inside the Maitland house, which features a detailed model of the town to get a sense of its layout, along with Adam and Barbara’s adoration of their surroundings, their own home sitting majestically on a hill overlooking the landscape.

But there is a “be careful what you wish for” lesson to be learned here. Upon their untimely deaths, Adam and Barbara’s desire to stay home during their vacation results in their being trapped there for the next 125 years.

I love this town because of its Edward Hopper-like imagery, where the mundane is made interesting through lighting and color. It’s sleepy yet bright.

The few citizens we do see are quirky but friendly. It lacks controversy but not tragedy, providing a picturesque landscape that mirrors the Dietz’s desire to modernize their new surroundings and the Maitland’s yearning for freedom from their ghostly imprisonment.

Hill Valley, CA – Back to the Future (1985)

With its paradoxical name and ever-changing appearance throughout the franchise, Hill Valley is an important character in the Back to the Future trilogy. Any movie about time travel uses its setting to portray the characters in a specific time frame, but the landscape, economy, and safety of Hill Valley are significantly altered with each decision that Doc and Marty make during their travels.

At the beginning of the first movie, the town, like the McFly family, has a lived-in look that has seen better days but is still a decent place to live. There are a few sketchy areas, and even a little bit of a homeless problem, but ultimately, it’s a typical suburban California neighborhood, which was authentically shot in and around the Los Angeles area.

Changes Through Time

When Marty takes out a pine tree in 1955, the Twin Pines mall becomes the Lone Pine Mall when he returns to 1985. When Biff gets hold of the sports almanac that makes him rich, it creates an alternate timeline where Hill Valley is overrun with crime and corruption thanks to Biff’s money and power. When Doc saves Clara from her runaway horse, the name of the canyon that she was destined to fall into changes when they return to the present.

The town is the most vulnerable character in the movie for this reason, and it shows how one little action can have giant consequences. I wouldn’t want to live in every version of Hill Valley, but overall, it’s a place with a rich history and, like Marty, full of both flaws and potential.

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Shelby, IN – Now and Then (1995)

The movie Now and Then has a very Stand by Me feel, but you won’t find Castle Rock on this list due to its tendency to unleash unspeakable evil and tragedy in its many incarnations. With Savannah, Georgia, filling in as Shelby, Indiana (which is a real town but looks nothing like the movie version), you get that good southern weather with a friendly midwestern vibe.

Midwestern Idyll

The town’s cookie-cutter idyllic image, with its identical homes equipped with gaslight lanterns in every yard, provides a summer oasis for four teen girls coming into their own while investigating an old tragedy and dealing with their own past and present struggles. There is just enough to do in this town that you won’t get bored. It has a drive-in theater, a ball field, a soda shop, a psychic medium, a cemetery for late-night séances, and plenty of suburban and country roads to ride your bike through.

While they all come from the same racial and economic background, the girls in the film are four different people with varying interests, knowledge, and family lives. Their main summer goal is to earn enough money to buy a treehouse, but when the girls suspect that the ghost of a dead boy is asking them to solve a mystery surrounding his death, their focus shifts to investigating their town’s history, and they start to see it in a whole new way.

While most small-town movies like to focus on underlying corruption or how simple grudges and gossip can escalate into chaos and even violence, this movie doesn’t vilify its setting for keeping a past history in the dark from its younger citizens. Instead, it mirrors the awakening of the girls from childhood to adulthood and the good and bad that come from gaining a better understanding of how the world really is.

Woodsboro, CA – Scream (1996)

Serving as the location for a slasher movie might make you wonder why anyone would want to live in Woodsboro, especially if you are a teen who fits the bill of a classic horror movie victim.

But remove the psycho killers from the picture, and you have a spacious, upper-middle-class town that features the isolation of a rural landscape but with all of the modern conveniences and mindsets of the mid-90s.

A Cool California Locale

The film’s California shooting locations paint a pretty picture of giant homes set on hilltops overlooking red sunsets and mountainous terrain. Incidentally, this makes it the perfect location for a killer to stalk and corner their victims. Your neighbors are too far away to hear your cries for help, and your home is full of large, winding rooms, perfect for a knife chase.

The teen characters are wealthy enough to own cell phones at a time when only business executives carried them around, and they are smart enough to know the ways of the world and what it takes to survive a modern-day horror movie.

Still, the killers are just as savvy, using the town to their advantage to get over on the meager police department and to cover their tracks with modern tools such as cloned cell phones and a library of horror movies to study and learn from. Woodsboro contains the best of both worlds, but even the greatest towns can house a psycho or two.

Hale, MD – Runaway Bride (1999)

Several romantic comedies feature small towns. The personal lives and gossip that entwine in a small town are perfect fuel for inside jokes, hilarious miscommunications, and situational hijinks.

My favorite romcom town, though, has to be Hale, MD, featured in Runaway Bride. Berlin, Maryland served as the shooting location for the town. It has an old-fashioned yet well-preserved look.

The People of Hale

The characters are quirky without being annoying or caricatures of “ignorant hicks.” It’s a town that gets together and laughs a lot, but it largely ignores deeper issues, such as personal vices, jealousy, and bullying, until one outsider exposes their flaws and forces each person in town to confront their hidden feelings and frustrations with one other.

As a result, people are able to clear the air and stop ignoring the underlying issues that irk them, including Maggie, the Runaway Bride who has put her town on the map for fleeing from several weddings before she reaches the altar.

Haddonfield, IL – Halloween (1978)

It can take just one bad egg to ruin a town’s reputation. In Haddonfield, IL, that bad egg is Michael Myers. After killing his teenage sister, six-year-old Michael is sent away to spend his life at a mental institution after all attempts to rehabilitate him fail.

But his connection to the town is strong enough to make him break out one night 15 years later and go on another killing spree to feed his evil impulses.

Hollywood Becomes Haddonfield

Haddonfield becomes the setting for nearly every Halloween movie in the franchise. Each film depicts it in a different way, but ultimately, it’s a quiet Midwestern town with a dark past that keeps resurfacing. Despite the authentic Halloween feel of the original film, it was actually shot in the spring in Hollywood, CA, using movie magic to create the illusion of Halloween in Illinois.

Their ability to suspend my disbelief has always made it a place where I desire to spend my Halloween, as long as I avoid the Myers house.

Mandrake Falls, NH – Mr. Deeds (2002)

Comedies love to exaggerate people and places in order to provide fuel for their jokes. The 2002 remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town features a very sincere depiction of an idyllic New England town (actually New Milford, NH) that would shape Deeds’ genuine Boy Scout persona balanced with quirky characters whose looks and mannerisms are played strictly for laughs.

As a result, when the story leans too far into silliness or melodrama, it snaps right back.

A Scaled-Down Town

The town tries to have everything that a big city would have, only scaled down to fit their size and needs. Their airport is merely a grassy field with a sign marking its location. They have a volunteer fire department with daring rescue training techniques that impress even New York City firemen.