The Parenting fizzles as horror and as comedy. And if you’re still considering watching just for the Brian Cox nude scene? Don’t bother. It’s probably a stunt butt.

| Original Score: C | Apr 18, 2025

This movie proves that a whole bunch of talented actors can make a somewhat boring film.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Apr 5, 2025

While the broad comedic style of The Parenting won’t work for all audiences, others will likely find its proud goofiness refreshing in a time when feature-length comedies are consistently undervalued.

| Apr 3, 2025

The Parenting was an unexpected delight of a comedy horror movie that provided a perfect balance of camp and possession.

| Original Score: B | Mar 30, 2025

A brisk, clever, saucy, and yes, campy piece of entertainment that will keep you smiling almost all the way through its hour-and-a-half runtime, with the much-appreciated bonus of an endearing queer romance.

| Mar 24, 2025

Once it gets going, it does manage to entertain in a goofy, throwaway kind of way. If you're in the mood for something light, and you don't mind uneven pacing or hit-or-miss jokes, this movie is fun enough for a 90-minute escape.

| Mar 24, 2025

Not my cup of schlock.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 21, 2025

There’s something oddly charming about watching a cast this stacked let loose in a low-budget, ’80s-style horror-comedy that feels like a 90-minute SNL sketch. I didn’t love it, but I enjoyed it, almost in spite of myself.

| Mar 20, 2025

Director Craig Johnson gives up the ghost of a promise the movie had going for it.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 20, 2025

Despite being well worth seeing for its formidable ensemble of seasoned actors, The Parenting lacks both subtext and perspective to elevate itself beyond being merely a familiar, inherently basic comedy-horror exercise which ends up hemorrhaging itself...

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 20, 2025

This horror comedy has both scares and laughs–or at least eye rolls–but it's hard not to feel that its stellar cast is squandered.

| Mar 19, 2025

Even with its off-the-beat humor and familiar family comeuppances, The Parenting provides enough charm, laughs, and ghastly nonsense to make it an entertaining movie.

| Original Score: 3.25/5 | Mar 17, 2025

It’s a dysfunctional mishmash of stuff that makes us laugh in fits and starts, which isn’t often enough.

| Mar 17, 2025

The story is slight but the laughs are genuine in Craig Robinson's The Parenting. That it all works as well as it does is mostly thanks to a very game cast of talented actors.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 17, 2025

There's a sketch comedy vibe to the film (credit or blame writer Kent Sublette's work on SNL), but the ensemble cast is stacked. Stand-out is Flynn, who displays surprisingly great comedic chops. Fans of Summoning Sylvia or Slay will enjoy this

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 17, 2025

As a comedy, it stops being funny and as a horror it never starts being scary with Johnson’s direction far too drab and lifeless for something so cartoonish and schlocky. Big swing, bigger miss.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 15, 2025

What started with so much promise ends in lots of artifice and even forgetting what genre The Parenting inhabits.

| Mar 15, 2025

This quintet of veteran actors aren't enough to make the beyond basic storyline, lame jokes, and questionable effects serviceable.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 14, 2025

This is a mostly effective matchup of Meet the Parents and exorcism tropes, with treasured actors bickering and bouncing zany, sometimes delightfully crude dialogue off one another

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 13, 2025

The ostensibly heartfelt scenes where characters apologize for their behavior or stand up for themselves never display an ounce of emotional potency because no one resembles a real person.

| Original Score: C- | Mar 13, 2025