“If you take a black cat and broil it in the oven and you peel off the skin from the bones and you take it off and you chew on the bone, you’ll be invisible.”
Parents begins by blasting Perez Prado’s ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ as the bright blue title card is thrown across the front of an Oldsmobile, vanishing from the screen with a “pop” sound effect. This is the first clue that Bob Balaban’s debut is more than just a campy B movie and it continues to defy expectations all the way through to its barbecued-social-worker climax. In between our child protagonist’s initial misgivings about the mystery meat on his dinner plate and his school counselor’s untimely meeting with his father’s fairway driver we’re presented with all manner of macabre shenanigans—a wine-chugging pre-teen who claims to be from the moon, a bed that turns into a pool of blood, links of animated dry-cured sausage, a covert trip to view cadavers at the Toxico lab. Composed with unanticipated flair and trimmed of any fat (or maybe it’s all fat?), it blurs the line between pastiche and satire while pulling from myriad sources of inspiration, including the paranoid thrillers of the ‘50s setting and the reality-adjacent work of David Lynch.
It dives right into a lunatic exploration of childhood paranoia. In his single screen role, Bryan Madorsky portrays Michael Laemle, a reserved, spindly, ten year old loner who has recently moved to a brand new suburb with his parents. Shiela (Juno Mills-Cockell)—his solitary friend who also happens to be the daughter of his father’s new boss—fills his head with all sorts of zany notions that set his mind awhirl. One of the seeds that she plants is the idea that adults live entirely different lives when their children are asleep. She’s grown wise to her parents’ midnight machinations, however, and has taken to nocturnal surveillance. “Last night, my daddy emptied the dishwasher naked,” she whispers to Michael as all four parents get soused while playing cards in the living room. Thus enlightened, Michael grows suspicious of his parents. He is further disturbed by dreams and traumatized by his accidental witness of his parents in carnal relation (confusing smears of lipstick for blood and then exaggerating the memory).
Nick (Randy Quaid) works at a chemical plant developing something akin to Agent Orange while Lily (Mary Beth Hurt) is a typical homemaker. Though neither character is given much depth, steady performances that balance a winking self-knowledge with a commitment to the satirized stereotypes complement Michael’s building sense of unease. At certain points you sense a conflict between the couple, such as when Nick tries to send Michael to bed early again for refusing his daily hunk of red meat; but just as often they are seen to be sharing a private communication just out of the boy’s grasp. And there’s always that sense of lurking horror when Mr. Laemle is not present—that maybe he will pop up and commit an atrocity out of nowhere—even if he usually only works himself up to a stern talking-to.
Michael’s terrors occur both day and night—at one point he finds a hand flopping around above the whirring garbage disposal while blood drips over the fridge, and later finds a human leg hanging from a meathook in the basement. He often snaps back to “reality” when his mother pops the dream bubble, but it’s left up to us to decide what he really sees. In an odd but inspired choice, Michael’s runaway imagination is depicted with the ominous arthouse sensibility of David Lynch. The bright suburban neighborhood, with its white picket fences, green lawns, and split-level houses providing cover for clandestine activities, recalls Blue Velvet. The silence-laden interludes, shifts into black-and-white, and moody echo of the soundtrack point to Eraserhead. Regular Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti provides several compositions. And Balaban frequently hones in on that Lynch trademark where he composes a scene as if it is deeply weird while the actual actions of the characters are completely benign. These moody zone-out sessions, full of brooding ambiance and bold camera angles, are contrasted by bouncy fun elsewhere. To wit, when Sheila invites herself into the Laemle house, steals a bottle of wine and jumps into the off-limits freezer with glee, the scene plays atop ‘Chantilly Lace’. Dean Martin also appears on the soundtrack and the credits roll to ‘The Purple People Eater’.
While the narrative structure and satire may be basic, the visual style of Parents is admirably bold. There are a number of impressive shots with no discernible CGI trickery, including one retreating shot that backs out through a basement window and an air vent that calls to mind a (much richer) shot from Antonioni’s The Passenger. And later, when Michael has caused a great deal of trouble for his parents and finds himself tied to a chair at the dinner table, the entire set rotates so that Michael and his parents spin around the room while they interrogate him.
Through the bulk of the film almost every sinister plot element can be explained away as the hallucinations of a young boy under the twisted influence of an older friend. Randy Quaid effortlessly jumps between lovingly carrying his son to bed to jabbing him with a threatening gaze and harsh words, giving the impression that his patience is wearing thin—that if only Michael would eat his dinner… but this can be interpreted in the same way that I reacted when my parents force fed me green beans when I was a kid. Their relationship is contentious and laced with Freudian allusions, but that does not necessarily mean that Michael’s private fantasy is true. But it is! The illusion is severed when the school counselor (Sandy Dennis) visits the Laemle home and discovers hard evidence. There’s not much movie left after this point but what remains is a cheery slasher.
Though it telegraphs its twist, leaves some satirical stones unturned, and never generates a solid scare, the excellent cast (special mention to the two children) and creative presentation put some tasty meat on its bones.