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Parents

I have absolutely no appetite for horror flicks and only watched this movie because it was billed as black comedy. Parents is not a movie anyone like me should watch late on Saturday night - it is very black alright but there is nothing remotely comedic about it. The story pivots around the idea that the most horrible things are possible and happen behind the facade of comfortably conventional.

What struck as different about this movie is how the bizarre story unfolds - there is nothing Stephen King or Night Shyamalan about it and yet I was not able to sleep all night. The two other movies I recall having this effect on me were American Psycho and Hannibal but then I do my very best to stay away from the horror genre.

I am not sure what one should expect in true dark comedy but this was clearly not what I had counted on. I would have been able to deal with something like The Virgin Suicides. If visceral reaction is a measure of success for a horror film this one scores very high at least with audiences like me who have a very low threshold to begin with. How it fares with horror movie fans with a stomach for the stomach-churning could be a whole different thing.

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