Depending on how much of a wimp you are, the campy poster art for Parents is either a grievous misrepresentation of how bleak and bloody the movie is—or it’s a perfect perverse set-up for this film’s assault.
The mission statement behind the movie seems to be to take a Norman Rockwell painting and spin a horrific story around it. The idea is as inherently funny as it is potentially disturbing. There are slow dripping rivulets of humor in this story of a deeply damaged young boy and his mega-weirdo parents in the Leave it to Beaver era, but this is a horror film first. It’s queasy and uncomfortable, touching on weird traumatic childhood nerves—and when it brings the blood, it does it by the gallon.
Calling the shots is Bob Balaban, notable actor directing his first feature (after a few television credits) and he’s in a 105 degree fever over every single shot. He navigates the strange psychological terrain as powerfully as he flashes the squeaky clean period details. The gore is less unsettling than one stern look from father Randy Quaid (character-actor Balaban hands over this film’s most juicy role to another character-actor), who plays Ward Cleaver if he was a psychopath. Quaid’s all frosty finesse, never breaks his straight face, and is one of the scariest men in all of 80s horror movies.