‘Adulthood’ Review: Alex Winter’s Suburban Neo-Noir Dark Comedy is Dead on Arrival [C-] TIFF

Alex Winter hasn’t directed a narrative feature film since 2015’s Smosh: The Movie. In some sense, you could say we haven’t gotten a real Alex Winter original narrative movie since his studio-botched 1993 co-directing debut (alongside Tom Stern), Freaked—a wacked-out, surrealist, gross-out body horror comedy with its aesthetic firmly rooted in their 1991 MTV sketch show The Idiot Box. That film has aged gracefully as a weird and funny farce. In the time since, Winter, the man most general audiences know simply as the Bill to Keanu Reeves’ Ted, has stepped back from traditional Hollywood machinery, acting in smaller film and television roles and directing TV movies for now-defunct kids’ cartoons and shows, as well as socially conscious documentaries like The YouTube Effect and Zapa.

All of which is to say that Adulthood, in theory, feels like the spiritual, logical next step from Freaked, 32 years later, following in that film’s footsteps by premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival. Its darkly comic story about two siblings who find themselves in a sticky situation after discovering a dead body in the walls of their childhood home’s basement feels like a natural progression for a director who began his career putting himself on camera in Screaming Mad George monster makeup. 

Adulthood is nowhere near as loony as Freaked — not necessarily a problem, given its title and the fact that it’s directed by a more world-weary man in his 60s rather than his 20s. What is a problem is that it lacks the same brazen charm. Where Winter once proved capable of milking a madcap premise for all it was worth, squeezing out every possible gag, Adulthood gets lost in incompatible tones. Though clearly meant to be humorous, it’s never funny enough to succeed as a dark comedy. And where it leans on the more brutal aspects of its story to drive the plot, it’s never harrowing enough to work as a thriller. 

Then again, Winter didn’t write Adulthood as he did Freaked. Working from a screenplay by Michael M.B. Galvin, the film feels desperate to escape its generally flat handling of the story, despite having the potential to be funnier and more thematically rich. As Noah (Josh Gad) and Megan (Kaya Scodelario) become entangled in a murder plot set in motion 30 years earlier by their mother, they learn all too well how easily one inherits their parents’ problems and mistakes. It’s a solid thematic pillar for a film in which two siblings continually make a bad situation worse, but it’s undermined by the dull execution of this suburban black comedy.

Noah and Megan are contrasted predictably: Noah is a failing screenwriter still relying on the support of their mother Judy (Ingunn Omholt), now hospitalized after a stroke, who relaxes by smoking weed and watching porn. Megan has a family and runs a small business, the more mature and put-together sibling. Naturally, when they locate the body, Megan wants to notify the police, but Noah hesitates. “How can you sleep with that thing in the basement?” Megan asks. “Apparently, I did it my entire adolescence,” he replies.

Noah convinces Megan that dealing with their mother’s old crime quietly is worth the risk, and they dump the body in the lake. A few days later, local science students recover it, putting a detective on their trail and prompting Judy’s nurse (Billie Lourd) to extort them once she discovers their secret. Unless Noah and Megan can come up with $10,000 quickly, the whole family risks taking the fall. 

These plot escalations could help a neo-noir take shape, but Adulthood makes them feel labored and forced. Lourd’s character’s scorched-earth hatred for the siblings, strong enough to drive her aggressive blackmail, comes across as unearned. Neither the script nor her performance builds enough looming menace to make her character believable. Gad and Scodelario are similarly hampered by thinly drawn characters, leaving them little to do. They lack material for true comedy, and the story beats are so plain that the siblings are reduced to dryly moving the plot forward, ticking off each mild plot point.

The only cast member able to give this a little bit of life is Anthony Carrigan as the pair’s cousin Bodhi, an offbeat live wire whose eccentricities occasionally conceal potential motives he may be hiding. Carrigan is able to override the film’s dull progression, not because the other actors aren’t capable (as much as anyone may be inherently annoyed by Josh Gad, he’s actually got some inherent chops that are clearly wasted here), but because he’s the only character written with enough life to give him any sort of distinct set of mannerisms or personality.

Adulthood eventually wakes up a little bit and veers into violent absurdities born of people trying to maintain a handle on a situation they don’t totally understand in the way you might find in a Coen Brothers movie. No filmmaker deserves being held to such a high standard as that duo, but Adulthood is just too flat, even on its own terms. It’s not a movie that necessarily needs the once more manic filmmaker that helmed Freaked, but one would hope it would at least be shrewd enough to make an impact in the context of its own temperament.

Grade: C-

This review is from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival where Adulthood had its world premiere. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.