Recxpectations: Adulthood

Adulthood is a film about two siblings who, after their mother ends up in the hospital with a stroke, return to their childhood home and discover a body hidden in the walls. Dark hijinks ensue. (I would recommend only watching the first minute or so of the trailer or skipping it outright because it shows a lot of the movie.)

EXPECT: BLAND FARGO
Small town noir/murder stories are always going to get compared to Fargo, which is probably unfair since that is a classic that few will live up to, but such is life and this film lacks the quirkiness of the Coen Brothers. Josh Gad’s character is a Hollywood writer, which leads to a few good jokes but not much more. The location was everytown; I saw a map of New York in a scene but the film was shot in Ottawa. I know that it’s hard to build a sense of community in a lower budgeted (I’m assuming) film that can’t give a bunch of random characters speaking lines but this film felt like the characters were almost completely isolated from the outside world. “Adulthood” is focused almost completely on the siblings and I feel like it could have been better if it was more of an ensemble piece.

EXPECT: SHODDY POLICE WORK
I understand that people don’t have a ton of faith in the police and, given the solve rate for murders, maybe that lack of faith has been earned, but it always bugs me when cops just miss obvious things and this movie even has the detective straight up say that it’s awfully suspicious that so much is happening since the brother and sister have shown up. But there’s almost zero investigation and I feel like the detective character has maybe one scene that doesn’t include the siblings. There’s one moment in particular that should have been fairly impactful but it is never mentioned again.

DON’T EXPECT: A TON OF TWISTS AND TURNS
The synopsis of the movie makes it seem like there’s one twist after another. About an hour into the movie, I thought, “So this is more like hijink (singular) ensues.” I’m not saying that there aren’t a few turns along the way but I’d hardly call it a twisty movie; it’s moreso in the genre of “Someone gets increasingly in over their head.”

EXPECT: A FEEL BAD MOVIE
This was never going to be a feel good movie but, by the end, I was pretty much turned off. The lack of detective work made it less of a game of cat and mouse and more just watching a cat beat up a dead mouse. It’s also a movie that has a message and I can see what they are trying to say but it wasn’t a direction I wanted to go so I can’t say that they didn’t stick the landing but I was neither entertained nor impressed by how they wrapped things up.

Ultimately, the film is better than the standard straight-to-DVD crime drama but it’s ultimately a fairly forgettable experience. It’s a kind of film that gets a “Hey, you know what I just saw that wasn’t too bad” if you stumbled upon it on TV.