‘The Parenting' Review: Meet the Poltergeist

New York Times

13-03-2025

'The Parenting,' a raunchy, gross-out horror-comedy directed by Craig Johnson, has plenty of toilet humor and gay jokes stuffed into its tedious running time, few of them clever or funny. Its best bit is in the setup: After a family is killed at home in the early 1980s, the house sits empty until the present day, when it is converted into an Airbnb that the young couple Josh (Brandon Flynn) and Rohan (Nik Dodani) rent for a weekend getaway. 'This place is a mansion,' Rohan enthuses, about what in the '80s was an ordinary suburban household. The punchline is that in this economy, no one can afford to buy even a haunted house anymore. Yes, there's a 400-year-old poltergeist terrorizing inhabitants. But it would sure beat renting.
The boys have secured this spacious if malevolent abode as an occasion to introduce each other to their parents, who are played by television royalty: Lisa Kudrow, Dean Norris, Edie Falco and Brian Cox. Some early water-and-oil mingling feels like a tepid riff on 'Meet the Parents,' but when the demonic intrigue ramps up, the tone shifts to full-blown slapstick lunacy, with heads spinning 'Exorcist'-style, family members projectile vomiting, and in a meanspirited fashion, more than one Pomeranian getting brutally butchered. The cast is game — especially Cox, who gets to do some over-the-top Linda Blair mugging — but the script, by a 'Saturday Night Live' writer, Kent Sublette, is puerile and abrasive, lacking the wit of 'Evil Dead' (an obvious influence) and the brio of 'Scary Movie.'
The ParentingRated R Rated R for crude humor, strong language, violence and some mild drug use. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Max.