10 Most Horrifying Urban Nightmare Movies

Parents is about a quiet, tranquil suburbia gone wrong, similar to films such as Blue Velvet, Society and The 'Burbs. However, it takes that idea and pushes it into more personal realms as whereas films like The 'Burbs focus on someone who found the dark secrets of their own volition, this movie tells a story where those horrifying secrets invade their own home, a story of someone who couldn’t even trust their own family.

Parents tells the story of a young man called Michael who, through a series of nightmarish situations, begins to suspect his parents are cannibals despite everybody else in the pastel colored neighborhood trying to convince him that such things are all in his head. Michael is undeterred, however, as his nightmares become more vivid when he starts to find strange ‘meat’ in the basement.

Few horror films delve into an idea that one cannot trust their family, this is mainly because a horror film has to set up a modicum of normalcy before delving into a nightmarish plot. The idea that your own family can hurt you destroys that idea of normality, hence why horror movies prefer to look outside for its horror content. By bringing that idea inwards, Parents taps into a new kind of paranoia. It’s a fresh, memorable take on the ‘cannibal’ genre that by 1989 had grown rather stale.