Academy Award-nominated documentarian Courtney Marsh makes her scripted feature debut with Where Did the Adults Go?, and the rough edges are immediately apparent. The movie is incredibly well-acted, but it lacks the heart that it keeps talking about. This is a family drama that never eases up on the drama.
The film is titled after the book that Cynthia (played by The Handmaid’s Tale star Carey Cox) wrote, painting her family in an unflattering light by all accounts. Cynthia is joining her siblings Bryce (Amadeus Serafini) and Miles (Carson MacCormac) at their parents’ home to mark the anniversary of their passing, but her request to sell the house causes tension between the trio to boil over. This isn’t the first movie about family members coming home only to unearth old secrets or grudges, but it’s one of the most intense.
Marsh’s intent, per a director’s statement provided to press, is to tell a story “empathetically from three different points of view.” She wants the viewer to draw their own conclusion. But that only works if any of the points of view connect with the audience, and none of the characters in Where Did the Adults Go? are able to do that. All of them consistently come across as self-involved and arrogant, and the crossover point—the point in family dramas where everybody starts turning the page—happens far too late. Cynthia, Bryce and Miles don’t feel like a dysfunctional family that the audience is following to a conclusion; they feel like three separate characters, trying to score points on one another.
This does not take away from the effectiveness of the performances. Cox, Serafini and MacCormac are asked to be in a heightened state through a majority of the movie, and they sustain that frustrated energy throughout. The best part of the film is just seeing their effort clearly come through on screen. Serafini has the most to do as Bryce can’t decide if he’s the older brother or a surrogate parent no one asked for, but all three stars are well worth watching.
Their characters just provoke the same reaction in the audience that they provoke in each other. As much as they argue about how they treat each other, they create that same frustration in the viewer. It’s disappointing, as the performances are so good that more relatable characters could have made this film something truly touching—not necessarily a happy ending, but just something to invest into.
Something else Marsh tries to accomplish is disability representation in the character of Cynthia. She states that her intent is for disability to be just a part of who Cynthia is, and generally she succeeds. But when the first thing that Cynthia and Bryce argue about at the top of the movie is her disability, that becomes the first impression of her character. If the plan was to not make that a focal point, it would have been better to have that scene later in the film, after the audience had gotten to know other facets of Cynthia. Just because she uses a wheelchair doesn’t mean it has to be immediately addressed. And as a viewer with a disability, her semi-monologue about it actually made me less interested in her character.
Where Did the Adults Go? doesn’t provide a satisfactory answer to its own question. The sense as the credits roll is that it’s meant to be rhetorical, and none of the three characters have actually grown up. But it’s not clear if that’s what Marsh was aiming for or if that’s just the impression created by all of the various arguments. There’s a feeling of detachment, as if her sensibilities as a documentarian are still unwittingly present. The best family dramas work because they do ultimately come down to a genuine sense of family, and this film—for all its tremendous acting—never does.
Where Did the Adults Go? releases Sept. 1, 2026 on Apple TV, Amazon and Kinema. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Black Phoebe Films.
Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.
