Kent Sublette's The Parenting screenplay begins promisingly as long-term partners Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn) prepare a rented mansion for a weekend getaway involving themselves and their parents. The bustling energy between Dodani and Flynn as they prepare to meet their respective in-law's for the first time has some amusing vibes. It helps that the caretaker of this facility is the immediately suspicious Elizabeth, played by the always welcome Parker Posey. How can you go wrong with Party Girl’s leading lady acting like an oddball?
Eventually, the parents arrive and a Meet the Fockers-style comedy begins unspooling. Rohan's got his stern and subdued adopted parents Gerald (Brian Cox) and Dorothy (Edie Falco). Josh's folkers, meanwhile, are the more relaxed and peculiar couple Lisa (Lisa Kudrow) and John (Dean Norris). There's already plenty of inevitable awkwardness bringing all these people together, especially since Dorothy is hostile to everything related to Josh. However, extra turmoil appears once it becomes clear an evil demon haunts this house. Turns out this is actually a Conjuring/Amityville Horror-style movie. So much for that "relaxing" getaway.
Director Craig Johnson and screenwriter Kent Sublette get the best early Parenting moments out of subverting the star personas of its most famous actors. After years of being the malicious head of the Roy family, Cox here plays a meeker soul who has no problem singing along to a vintage tune at the dinner table. John, meanwhile, is one of the nicest people Norris has ever played, a relaxed guy happy to meet Josh's lover. There’s fleeting fun in seeing these two and folks like Falco step outside of their small-screen comfort zones. Plus, the intimate gaze of the story keeps the focus on chuckle-worthy clashes of personality, like Lisa bringing so many yapping dogs that are the bane of Dorothy’s existence.
Unfortunately, once the horror elements creep into The Parenting, that’s when the project slips off the rails and steadily loses its path. This is despite practical effects work realizing the mysterious outstretched army of the demon entity looking really solid. Johnson and cinematographer Hillary Spera, meanwhile, initially incorporate some fun visual flourishes like Dutch angles to differentiate journeys to that haunted basement from mundane conversations between in-laws in the driveway. However, once Gerald becomes possessed and more ghosts start popping up around the house, The Parenting’s creative instincts lose their originality.
Too much of the antics involving possessed Gerald are obvious pastiches of The Exorcist, complete with his head turning around 360 degrees. Lots of gooey vomit also evokes this feature and other possession features. Jump scares and designs for paranormal entities in this rented home could easily slip into a random Conjuring film. The Parenting’s decently unique starting premise gives way to a bunch of horror movie elements you’ve seen countless times before. Worse, the awkward stabs at imbuing comedy into fright-heavy sequences involves yawn-worthy material like a prolonged fart gag. While Johnson proved adept at balancing multiple tones in The Skeleton Twins, he’s much less successful on that front here.
Even as The Parenting devolves into more derivative horror pastiches, the assembled actors prove amusing. A quiet scene of Falco and Kudrow portraying two mothers finally bonding relies on didactic dialogue, no question. However, the two have enough chemistry to make the sequence reasonably amusing. Posey’s intentionally atonal performance is especially a highlight and yet another reminder that she needs to be in every movie possible. Christopher Nolan’s greatest sin as a filmmaker is that he hasn’t hired her to anchor a movie yet. Supporting player Vivian Bang as Rohan and Josh's best friend Sara, meanwhile, has a big dramatic moment that comes out of nowhere. It’s one of the most awkwardly conceived moments in Kent Sublette's script. Why this abrupt detour into pathos for a character that hasn’t earned such depth?
However, Bang lends a laudable amount of irony-free conviction to this moment. It’s a microcosm of how much heavy lifting the actors are doing here in The Parenting. Still, for those who’re fans of these assembled performers and haven’t been exposed to other Exorcist parodies, this may suffice for absent-minded Saturday afternoon viewing. It’s certainly hard to begrudge a rare mainstream horror/comedy that lets two men kiss on-screen. Ditto an extended scene where Dean Norris repeatedly punches a possessed pooch while it’s fully covered in a towel. The dog turns out to be totally fine and nothing alarming is shown on-screen, don’t worry.
However, committing to such a conceptually repellant dark comedy bit evoking Gary Larson’s infamous “Here, Fifi! C’mon!” Far Side comic shows a more audacious Parenting side I wish got exploited more. Gimme more gags that will lead some viewers to cringe! Unfortunately, this film’s difficulty committing to truly remarkable material comes to a head in its generic climax. This sequence bizarrely channels Guardians of the Galaxy’s finale more than anything else. Early practical effects used to depict paranormal forces are also eschewed here in favor of avalanches of CGI. What started with so much promise ends in lots of artifice and even forgetting what genre The Parenting inhabits.
It's never easy to meet the in-law’s of your lover. Similarly, it’s rarely a cinch to pull off a horror/comedy hybrid. Craig Johnson’s fleeting success with blending genres automatically makes The Parenting a superior feature to his last streaming-exclusive title, 2018’s dismal Alex Strangelove. However, the greatest attributes here are the actors and occasional fun details like wallpaper in the primary mansion that evokes similar material seen in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. The rest of the film isn’t bad necessarily, but it’s primarily made up of gags and horror skewering’s you’ve seen elsewhere. In a world of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and The Cabin in the Woods, there are more consistent and humorous pastiches of frightening filmmaking out there.