2025 | rated R | starring Nik Dodani, Brandon Flynn, Brian Cox, Edie Falco, Lisa Kudrow, Dean Norris, Parker Posey, Vivian Bang | directed by Craig Johnson | 1 hr 34 mins | 1 out of 5 stars |
2025 Halloween Horrorfest # 4
Tired of remakes and sequels? Well here is a good old-fashioned original piece of indie trash. It will be hard to beat for the worst movie I’ve seen this year, but I’m sure someone will give it a valiant effort to knock it from the bottom.
Boyfriends Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn) have rented a large estate for the weekend where they have invited both men’s parents up for the weekend to meet each other – and where Rohan intends to propose. Very quickly Rohan’s side, dad (Brian Cox) and mom (Edie Falco) don’t get along with Josh’s side, mom (Lisa Kudrow) and dad (Dean Norris), but that pales in comparison to the next discovery that the house is haunted and has begun to possess one of them. B&B rental neighbor Brenda (Parker Posey) seems to know more than she’s telling about a demon that is seeking the family to enter human form before the end of the weekend.
The movie starts out promising, with Rohan and Johs in the car on the way to the house in a conversation about their expectations for the weekend. Immediately we are greeted with a non-stereotypical, multi-dimensional gay couple that have flaws and anxieties underneath. The opening of this movie reminded me of the last time I saw such a fully fleshed out gay couple in Clea Duvall’s wonderful meet-the-parents holiday film Happiest Season. That is clearly the movie that director Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins) and writer Kent Sublett (Saturday Night Live, so you know it’s not going to be funny) want to make. At some point someone must have said that their gay meet-the-parents comedy might get sold if they turned it into a genre movie.
Everything about this single-location horror/comedy feels like the product of a Project Greenlight season. You can imagine the focus groups, the actors chosen based on who we have under contract, the locations based on what we have access to, the budgetary compromises. We got an old house, write a movie in that. The movie-making machinery around all of it feels very apparent. It all looks and feels very cynical and calculating.
The script is terrible, and the movie is painfully unfunny, but my biggest issues with it is how it treats the horror elements. This is a movie that does not like horror. It doesn’t want to engage with the genre as a legitimate work of filmmaking. The Parenting treats horror as the punchline, puts it on as a skinsuit and wears it around as a way to sucker-bait an audience into this otherwise painful comedy. Remember how movies like The Cabin in the Woods and Shaun of the Dead both poke fun at the horror genre but also feel like a genuine love note. This is the exact opposite of that.
The core of our film is the parents, who are obnoxiously one-note. It’s always fun watching Dean Norris play Dean Norris, wise-cracking through anything he’s in and having a blast with whatever the material requires. Everyone else looks like they are serving out an HBO contract mandate. Brian Cox (Succession), Edie Falco (The Sopranos), Lisa Kudrow (The Comeback) and Parker Posey (The White Lotus) all come in to do a few days shooting of whatever-the-hell this is, with a tone that goes all over the map. In a better movie maybe the supernatural elements illuminate something about this meeting or parallel their relationships. Instead, the script uses it to short-cut the work of the parents actually working out their issues by giving them a common enemy to fight against.
Oh God and poor Brian Cox. For an actor who came off a career high with Succession to go right into something like this, where he is forced to walk around nude, vomit on command and spew homophobic slang (while demon possessed) is more degrading than his own Cameo account. Between the elderly sex jokes, the lame ghost effects, the barely existent story and Parker Posey hamming it up even for Parker Posey, The Parenting is a trail to get through.