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The opening scene of Craig Johnson’s The Parenting is the best part of the Max movie. With cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera—whose work is also currently seen on Daredevil: Born Again—, Johnson crafts a sequence of tangible tension, with its artificial, sitcom-lite set of the house in which the bulk of the story will occur being a feature, not a bug. Spera’s camera follows a demon taking hold of the house’s environment, using heightened colors at key moments. This becomes effective when green hues add a certain tension to a character’s face, or the living room’s wallpaper inexplicably falls apart. Eventually, we move outside the house, and the camera flips backward, immediately positioning this direct-to-streaming effort as worthy of our attention.
The Parenting then rapidly loses its potency as soon as it cuts to the present day, where we meet boyfriends Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn). It’s almost as if the primer that pulls us in was nothing but a cheap trick because the rest of the movie looks and feels so different than its first five minutes. Spera’s playful cinematography turns into the most unengaging, televisual grey sludge as the couple arrive at a country house, where its innkeeper (Parker Posey) behaves suspiciously in front of them, telling the two that the WiFi password is a Latin chant and drawing a large circle around the home.
However, Rohan and Josh have bigger things to worry about than their host’s strange behavior, as their families are meeting for the first time. Rohan’s parents, Sharon (Edie Falco) and Frank (Brian Cox) are stricter in how they want their son’s life to be, whilst Josh’s parents, Cliff (Dean Norris) and Liddy (Lisa Kudrow), are the complete polar opposite. Yes, Dean Norris is channeling a bit of Uncle Hank from Breaking Bad, while Cox seems to have never left Logan Roy. Yet, that’s oddly part of the charm of wanting to watch such a movie—seeing an all-star cast channel some of their best-ever characters and have the time of their lives while doing so in an entirely different setting that allows them to play. Essentially, that is what the core of acting has always been.
The Parenting‘s Cast Has Fun, But…
And who doesn’t like actors having fun for 90 minutes? I certainly do, but Kent Sublette’s screenplay is chock-filled with some of the most egregious horror comedy tropes that it becomes easy to figure out what will happen when the audience realizes that Josh, Rohan, and their families are staying in the same haunted house as the opening scene. The WiFi password doesn’t work because it’s not a password! It’s a chant to let a demon known as Andras inside the body of the person who recites it. When Frank reads the chant out loud, attempting to figure out what this “password” means, he accidentally gets possessed by Andras – and many hijinks ensue.
Credit where credit is due: Johnson and casting director Rich Delia knew what would happen when summoning in Brian Cox as the semi-bitter father possessed by a demon. Cox’s turn is the film’s most inspired because his sense of comedic timing (as he blurts out one perverse joke after the next) remains unmatched, even if there may be one too many vomit jokes for my liking. You cannot imagine anyone else in the role, and he seems to have a ball playing with The Parenting’s nifty practical effects, whether floating in the air or slightly modifying his facial expressions as they adapt to what the demon may or may not look like. Spera’s camera also plays with color in key moments where Frank’s mind tries to confront the demon but to no avail.
These inspired moments give some life to The Parenting, even if the humor mostly works in spades. The romantic alchemy between Dodani and Flynn is less effective than their complicated relationship with their parents. However, since Sublette’s script is full of clichés, their narrative arcs feel increasingly telegraphed, preferring to stay in familial platitudes rather than fully exploit the premise of a possessed Brian Cox wreaking havoc. Because as funny as he may be in the movie, there isn’t enough of him to sustain a 94-minute comedy when he gets locked into a room for the bulk of The Parenting’s middle section as Rohan and Josh attempt to investigate the demon’s origins.
Little to Offer in the Horror Department
While other supernatural creatures appear in the house to haunt the family, their presence isn’t as terrifying as it should be when the creature design itself leaves a lot to be desired. Since Spera’s cinematography also takes a dip when it gets to the present story, the visual style isn’t as nearly expressive as it could be to make this film feel at least creative and worth the short time spent watching this picture or at least stand out from the bevy of Max’s direct-to-streaming efforts that have no sense of personality or dynamism in its aesthetics.
The relationship between the families—and, eventually, a possessed dog, invertedly creating the film’s only cursed image—is engaging and keeps us on our toes when the situation worsens. However, it isn’t enough to warrant our attention fully when The Parenting reaches its admittedly fun climax, and we feel at arm’s length with the protagonists, having developed no tangible connection with them.
The final confrontation with the demon may be the film’s most surprising part, only because Sublette flips the story on its head and subverts our expectations. However, this is the sole time in which the screenplay doesn’t give us what we expect, with the rest of The Parenting being as conventional as most direct-to-streaming comedies are. The Max movie’s opening scene positioned Johnson’s film as having some formal juice, with playful cinematography and actors having fun for a breezy but enjoyable time in front of our television. It certainly has the most energy out of the whole thing. Some fun is to be had throughout the film’s brisk runtime.
Final Thoughts on Max’s The Parenting
However, as I began to think about the whole thing while the end credits rolled, I realized it would leave my mind as soon as it entered. If streaming services want to make “content” to fill their algorithm, that’s their prerogative. In fact, that’s what they seem to be doing most of the time. Yet, audiences deserve much better than mildly amusing distractions, both on the big and small screen. The Parenting sadly doesn’t give them what they should get, despite a cold open that tricks them into thinking it does.
Score: 2.5/5
The Parenting streams via Max tomorrow, Thursday, March 13th!
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