Parents

Parents is one of the smartest and most unsettling dark comedies the genre produced in the late 80s and it's criminally underseen. Bob Balaban uses the 1950s suburban aesthetic as a pressure cooker, all pastel colors and cheerful domesticity with something rotting underneath, and the tonal control he maintains across the whole film is remarkable. Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt play the parents with an uncanny warmth that's more disturbing than any explicit threat could be. Bryan Madorsky's Michael is a remarkably contained performance for a child actor and the film trusts him completely. If you haven't seen this one, fix that.