Peter Pan syndrome and mounting parental pressures plague the sibling leads of Adulthood, which marks the return of director Alex Winter to narrative filmmaking 10 years after the poorly received Smosh: The Movie. While it’s certainly a more competent effort than his previous foray into fiction, Adulthood, penned by Michael M.B. Galvin, doesn’t match the clever wit or practical effect ingenuity of Freaked, the 1993 black comedy Winter co-wrote and directed with Tom Stern. While that film—Winter’s debut as director, which he made just a few years after Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey—was a commercial failure, its cutting critique of celebrity, spectacle, and superficiality made the film a cult classic (in fact, a 4K restoration will hit the market next month, courtesy of Drafthouse Films). Devoid of that salient sense of humor and visual moxie, Adulthood is a drab commentary about how being a grown-up sometimes entails taking care of some really dirty laundry.
When their elderly mother suddenly suffers a stroke, siblings Meg (Kaya Scodelario) and Noah (Josh Gad, thankfully less grating than usual) return to their childhood home to assess her living situation. Though Meg lives a breezy 20-minute drive away, she hasn’t been to the house in quite some time, leaving all major caretaking duties to a home aid (Billie Lourd) whose name she doesn’t even care to remember. To be fair, Meg is constantly stressing about the health of her diabetic son, whose insulin levels she incessantly monitors via iPhone app. A chronically unemployed screenwriter based in L.A., Noah’s extended absence is a bit more excusable, though certainly exacerbated by an aimless ennui that’s unbecoming for a man his age.
Immediately regressing into their sibling dynamic—Meg derides Noah for porn and weed addictions, Noah scoffs at his sister’s side hustle of hawking cheap leggings on Facebook—the two make their way to the basement, a former playroom that now haphazardly stores their childhood possessions. As soon as they descend, however, they notice a fetid stench accompanied by a water leak. Investigating the source of this unpleasant combination causes them to peel back some vintage wood paneling, causing a previously concealed corpse to burst out from behind the wall.
They immediately recognize the deceased, clad in a ’90s-era pink track suit, as Patty Metzger, a woman who mysteriously vanished some 30-odd years prior. Unable to discern why she ended up hidden within their home, Meg and Noah decide that their only option is to hide the evidence. If they contact the authorities, would their ailing mother have her name dragged through the mud? Would the clearly traumatized children of Mrs. Metzger (one, the beady-eyed Bodie, is played by Winter himself) jump at the opportunity to sue for damages? Could a police investigation render the house they so desperately hope to sell worthless? These very adult anxieties are temporarily assuaged by the pair’s decision to wrap the skeleton in a tarp, load it into Meg’s minivan and dump it in a secluded creek teenagers used to frequent as a makeout spot.
Unsurprisingly, Patty’s remains are found soon after their sloppy disposal, leading the duo to become embroiled in a much more convoluted conspiracy. People who crack the case come out of the woodwork to demand bribes; a persistent detective begins poking around; the siblings fear that their mother may unwittingly mumble a confession in her incapacitated state. Some of these shenanigans are more satisfying than others, particularly whenever their creepy, katana-collecting cousin (Anthony Carrigan, sporting adult braces) gets in on the action.
While all of the actors involved inject a theatricality to their performance that elevates the film into an uncanny spoof of conspiratorial small-town thrillers, each player feels oddly isolated, unable to convincingly connect to one another. This is especially true of Meg and Noah’s tenuous dynamic. Ribbing one’s sibling is, for many, a tender form of teasing. Here, there’s no defining depth to their bond, leaving them in an odd position of at once appearing entangled yet estranged. The crumbs of their relationship simply aren’t enticing enough to follow along.
Had Galvin’s script shrunk its scope to, well, Adulthood, perhaps it would have yielded some more discernible insight. Adult braces, arrested development, and the constant stress of childrearing are, on a very wide spectrum of severity, are all adequate narrative devices for examining the clash of adult life with sudden adolescent regression. But there’s no build-up to any observations, particularly as it pertains to Meg’s near-constant panic over her son. (Who, by the way, has a virtually unseen “healthy” brother adding to the narrative clutter; why not just make him an only child?) There’s a slightly amusing irony imbued in how Meg and Noah have fulfilled the dreaded fate of turning into their parents—here more concerned with death than more banal personal betrayals—but this revelation (like the rest of the film) is as shallow as the watery grave the siblings believed would suffice as Patty’s final resting place.
Director: Alex Winter
Writer: Michael M.B. Galvin
Starring: Josh Gad, Kaya Scodelario, Billie Lourd, Alex Winter, Anthony Carrigan
Release Date: September 11, 2025 (TIFF); September 19, 2025
