The Parenting (2025) had everything going for it:
Lisa Kudrow. Brian Cox. Edie Falco. Dean Norris. Parker Posey. Plus rising stars Nik Dodani and Brandon Flynn as a sweet, grounded gay couple. A stacked cast that reads like a prestige TV dream team.
And yet… it’s a total misfire.
This horror-comedy—about two sets of parents meeting at a countryside house, only to be terrorized by a 400-year-old entity—feels like a recycled SNL sketch stretched to 90 minutes. The jokes don’t land. The scares don’t scare. The “satire” is toothless, relying on tired tropes and gags we have seen a million times.
It’s not Scary Movie—it’s not even trying to be. It’s safe, studio-approved quirk with all the edge sanded off. And that’s the real tragedy: when you give legends like Cox and Falco nothing to do but deliver sitcom lines, it’s not just boring—it’s insulting.
I went in hoping for a genre-reviving Halloween gem. I left wondering how this script ever got greenlit.
2/5 stars. A wasted ensemble in a film that’s neither funny nor frightening—just forgettable. We should stop letting SNL writers make movies.
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