The Parenting (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – A couple rents a countryside house for a weekend with their parents and then discover it’s inhabited by a 400-year-old poltergeist.

My Take – You know something is wrong when a film is left unreleased, despite completing production three years ago, and then suddenly dropped on a streaming service, less than two weeks after its trailer released.

Starring an unlikely cast of veteran heavy hitters like Brian Cox, Edie Falco, Lisa Kudrow, Parker Posey and Dean Norris, this Max release seemed like a perfect throwback supernatural comedy horror with a premise that seemed to mash the basic ideas of Meet the Fockers (2004) and Evil Dead (1981) together.

But while the idea is absolutely brilliant on paper, the final product, unfortunately, falls short in delivering the level of humor and thrills needed to make it truly entertaining. No doubt, the concept is promising, but the script lacks the strength needed to maintain the consistent laughs, and the horror elements are simply a mixed bag.

Directed by Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins) and written by Kent Sublette, who served as a writer on Saturday Night Live for 17 years, the narrative is far too drab and lifeless for something so cartoonish and schlocky, making it seem like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. And for some reason, the humor quotient is entirely reliant on the performers to be naturally funny versus anything situational.

Yes, it isn’t an awful film by any stretch of the imagination and might make for a good gateway film for viewers looking for ridiculousness, but for a horror comedy, the film is not all that funny, scary, or remotely intense. Even with its flaws, the cast help to elevate it considerably, to the point of watchability, but it surely doesn’t come as a surprise that it was stuck in a sort of theatrical-streaming limbo all this time.

Beginning in 1983 with a family getting wiped out by unknown supernatural entity, the story moves to the present day and follows Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn), a young couple who have planned a weekend getaway by renting out a remote country house, where they will meet each other’s parents for the first time.

Tensions are high from the get-go, as Rohan’s adoptive, rich and uptight parents (Edie Falco and Brian Cox) threaten the sanctity of his meticulously planned weekend, even as Josh’s well-meaning but constantly miss-stepping middle-class parents (Lisa Kudrow and Dean Norris) are trying their best to get along. To add to the chaos, one of Rohan and Josh’s friends, Sara (Vivian Bang), unexpectedly shows up at the house, to join the six people already there.

Things quickly take a turn for the worst, when the families realize that their rental, managed by the eccentric Brenda (Parker Posey), is haunted by the presence of a 400-year-old poltergeist. And, when one of the parents becomes possessed, it’s up to the families to come together and stop the evil entity once and for all before it is too late.

Honestly, the film starts off well. With situations involving misunderstood names, inappropriate jokes, an overly amorous dog, the film edges from amusing to genuinely funny thanks to a cast blessed with a wealth of comedy experience. But as soon as a demon enters the picture, summoned by a Wi-Fi password, the standard of jokes takes a sharp nosedive and even a game cast struggles to handle the silliness of it, grimly trying to make adult jokes work.

Going for the most silly, juvenile, and obvious jokes, that choice would have been fine if this was a film targeting kids and families. Being an R-rated comedy, it is clearly targeting adult audiences, however, it is hard to imagine any who would consider any of the humor funny.

Yet it is the horror where the film really drops the ball. It’s hard to ever take any of the possession seriously. Especially when there aren’t really any consequences to what’s happening. They even kill off multiple animals and it hardly even makes an impact. I get it, they’re going for laughs. But when everything is treated so lazily it’s hard to invest as a viewer.

I get it, considering the sub-genre it is set in, it would never have been overly terrifying, but the horror elements used here aren’t just ineffective, they are also incredibly safe. Even when there is technically a mystery to solve at the center of it all, there is little reason to truly care about it or its eventual outcome, as it is not only derivative, but also predictable, and unsatisfying.

Indeed, the best part of the film is easily the cast, who clearly seem to be having a blast together. Nik Dodani and Brandon Flynn make for decent leads, with Vivian Bang playing the perfect third wheel. It’s nice to see Brian Cox in a less serious role and he really relishes in the evil, even if it’s presented in such a corny way.

Lisa Kudrow and Edie Falco are fun as the mothers who could not be more opposite. Dean Norris feels a bit wasted, as he doesn’t have a ton to do outside of commenting on the stuff going on around them. Parker Posey, as always, steals every scene she’s in with her charisma and energy. On the whole, ‘The Parenting‘ is a below average supernatural caper with uneven comedy and lousy horror.