The Parenting (2025) review – Meet the parents with a ghost

Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today we are reviewing brand new horror-comedy The Parenting.

Another comedy horror let-down

The Parenting is another derpy faced soldier in the relentless march of disappointing 2025 horror. The year started off so promising with Heart Eyes and Companion. I thought we were in for a repeat of 2024 but the quality just hasn’t held up. (Updating from the future, things would get a lot better for horror in 2025).

As it stands, the last few movies I have reviewed have overcorrected that in a big way and The Parenting is no exception. This is horror comedy at its fluffiest and most annoying. We have an intolerably saccharine lead couple, a trope heavy plot, jokes that don’t land, Lisa fucking Kudrow, and Brandon Flynn doing his best impression of Jim Carrey. This is a tough one to get through.

“This is horror comedy at its fluffiest and most annoying. We have an intolerably saccharine lead couple, a trope heavy plot, jokes that don’t land, Lisa fucking Kudrow, and Brandon Flynn doing his best impression of Jim Carrey.”

The story follows a couple renting a holiday home for a winter getaway with their parents, only to discover it is inhabited by an ancient poltergeist. And by ancient I mean 400 years old. Are there even any surviving houses in the USA that are 400 years old? Has this poltergeist just been chilling in a field for 300 years waiting for this house to be built so that they can haunt it?

It features utterly pointless horror

Horror comedy can always be a little hit and miss. Good horror comedy takes a subtlety that is hard to come by. The strange thing with The Parenting is that the horror elements play second fiddle to the comedy. This is far more of an awkward “Meet the parents” style familial movie than anything else.

The bulk of the plot centres around the differences between the two main characters’ families. One is from a working class background, the other is from a well to do background. It’s a heavy dose of that usual type of “odd couple” stuff that you have come to expect from this type of film.

It’s not the type of movie I would watch, anyways, but it isn’t done particularly well, regardless. The Parenting is over familiar and recycles elements from much better films. When the horror does kick in, it is used to transform the movie into a more gross out comedy, rather than trying to blend the two elements together.

It’s the filmmaking equivalent of putting a sock puppet on your hand so that you can say something offensive and get away with it. A horror, comedy, Triumph the Dog, if you will. The poltergeist elements feel pretty redundant and there are no scares. Something which you don’t expect to a huge degree in comedy horror but does happen.

“I can’t shake the feeling that if The Parenting was made by a predominantly black cast and had the ‘Wayans’ name attached to it, it would be mercilessly panned. It is no better than the awful A Haunted House series.”

The plot goes into derivative possession territory before throwing a ton of horror shit at the wall to see if any of it will stick. I can’t shake the feeling that if The Parenting was made by a predominantly black cast and had the “Wayans” name attached to it, it would be mercilessly panned. It is no better than the awful A Haunted House series, it just benefits from a more well known cast. Speaking of which.

Shallow movie making propped up by famous names

This is a good example of a very shallow movie that is created to be propped up by its cast. Hence why you will see names like Brian Cox, Lisa Kudrow, and… Well, I don’t know, I don’t follow mainstream movies so I have no idea who any of these people are but you get the picture.

While this works, on occasions, with Cox being a particularly fun addition. It’s impossible to ignore how formulaic the story is and how played out the jokes are. The humour here is of the school yard variety. With bodily functions playing a central role and a whole bunch of offensive jokes that you probably wouldn’t get away with in a movie if it didn’t feature a homosexual lead couple.

A lead couple who are so Disneyfied to the point where they are not recognisable as a believable representation of two people in love. Naturally, that is done, predominantly, to shine a spotlight on their conflicts later in the movie. But that doesn’t change how annoying they can be. At least the actors are actually gay in real life, for a change, though.

The jokes, for the most part, don’t land. My partner laughs easier than, literally, anyone I have ever met in my entire life and she chuckled twice during the entire thing. If you are a fan of current SNL stuff, you might find the movie amusing. Otherwise, it is sketch humour stretched out over an extended period and gets old very fast.

A mixed bag of performances

I really don’t understand how they managed to get Brian Cox to sign on to this movie. He is a legitimately fantastic actor who, all of a sudden, is taking a De Niro-esque path into crappy comedy. Cox is, to be honest, the highlight of the movie and gets most of the laughs. He hams it up spectacularly and does a hell of a lot of heavy lifting.

“I really don’t understand how they managed to get Brian Cox to sign on to this movie. He is a legitimately fantastic actor who, all of a sudden, is taking a De Niro-esque path into crappy comedy.”

I really dislike Lisa Kudrow. I can live without her playing Phoebe, from Friends, in every single thing she stars in. Guess what? She is Phoebe from Friends here. Just older and with a bit more of a foul mouth. Fucking Yay! Parker Posey gnaws the scenery relentlessly.

Nik Dodani is fine. He seems to be the only actor who plays the movie fairly seriously. Brandon Flynn can take a long walk on a short pier for all I care. He gurns continuously and feels every part the Temu Jim Carrey.

As far as direction goes, pacing is a mess. So much time is spent on the Meet the Parents crap that I felt massively checked out when the horror started. Cinematography is okay and it does look like a decently high budget film. Special effects are pretty terrible but I am not sure if this is intentional to act as a visual gag all of its own.

The script is lousy and, honestly, is one of the unfunniest I have encountered in a comedy horror. The film is too long and the ending is incredibly fluffy for a movie like this, if you get what I mean.

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Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.

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