It's not easy watching one's parents get old, and having to care for them, mostly because we don't like to be reminded of how we're all end up with the problems of aging. The task of looking after aging parents often falls more to one sibling than another, and it's a cause of tension even in the best of sibling relationships. Of course, not all siblings end up finding a skeleton in their parents' basement.
Alex Winter, actor (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) and director (Zappa) definitely loves a good, weird story, when seemingly ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary situations. His latest fiction feature, Adulthood, seeings a pair of siblings having to deal with the quite the gruesome extraordinary, making a few very bad decisions, and trying to juggle the fallout. It's one that anyone adult with a sibling might relate to, even if it isn't always as smart or interesting as it could be.
Meg (Kaya Scodelario, The Maze Runner) has continued to live in the suburban town where she grew up, now raising her own family and occasionally checking on her mother Judy, who has some nursing care from a recent stroke. Another stroke hits her, leaving her hospitalized, and Meg's brother Noah (Josh Gad, Frozen) shows up to at least put in the appearance of being a dutiful son. As they go through the basement of the family home, they discover a skeleton behind a false wall. And they know the identity of that skeleton, a neighbour who went missing some 30 years before. Not knowing how the skeleton ended up there, but fearing the worst, Noah pushed Meg into helping him hide the body.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, the course of trying to hide a crime, never doth run smooth, and what Noah thinks is the perfect plan, soon turns into a nightmare. As the 'clever' hiding place is discovered, and the police start to uncover clues that always seem to lead back to Meg and Noah's parents, Meg becomes increasingly desperate, while Noah begins to retreat into this world of pot and porn as he insists it will all be fine. But it seems their mother's caregiver (Billie Lourd) has figured out the dark family secret, and wants $10,000 to keep quiet.
Neither Meg nor Noah has any idea what they are doing, and make it up as they go along as they try to redirect the police, gather the bribery money, and keep Meg's husband from discovering the truth. Meg might seem the good child since she 'stayed behind'. but she also left her mother's care in someone else's hands. Noah claims to have left for a successful screenwriting career, but his mother still pays his rent. In other words, they are pretty average people who have no idea how to commit or cover up a crime, other than what they've seen in the movies.
Scodelario and Gad do a terrific job as the adult siblings; not likely close as children, but not distant. They get along well enough, but their daily lives are different enough (Meg's full of family responsibility and the stress of a diabetic child, Noah's one of the typical slacker who still wanted a success that will likely never come). The film starts out more on the comedy side of dark comedy, as Noah keeps coming up with ways to keep suspicion away from them (and failing spectacularly). But when the situation truly gets dark, a perceptible switch happens; Noah falls apart, and it's up to Meg to save her brother and her family from ruin.
Winter's direction does its best to keep the pace moving, and clearly he works well with actors, getting great performances from not only the leads, but Lourd and other supporting actors who understand when to bring the comedy and went to lean into the Coen-esque noir darkness of the absurd situation. The script perhaps isn't as polished as it could be, as some of the conversations lack the kind of creativity that might be found in this situation, though Meg's final monologue makes for a good entry into the making of a villain.
Starting from a great premise and having two actors who make their characters and the relationship work is the key to Adulthood's dark humour and how an audience, especially those of us with siblings and elderly parents, can relate to them. A little more work on the script would have helped, but with a good audience, it's an enjoyable film.