Film Review – Couples Weekend (2025)

      **Couples Weekend, 2025.**

      **Written and Directed by Nora Kirkpatrick.**

      **Starring Alexandra Daddario, Daveed Diggs, Josh Gad, Ashley Park, and Kevin Pollak.**

      **SYNOPSIS:**

      A winter weekend getaway for couples in the wilderness is disrupted by an unexpected betrayal.

      You might think "Couples Weekend" is a rather unoriginal title that should never have passed the initial draft stage. Unfortunately, it aligns well with the final product, which feels more like a rough outline than a polished film ready for release. The story centers on two couples, Mitch and Melanie (played by Josh Gad and Ashley Park), and Debs and Josh (portrayed by Alexandra Daddario and Daveed Diggs), who travel to a remote snowy lodge for the holidays, although the exact location is never revealed. This lack of specificity signals the film's overall absence of detail, which becomes increasingly clear as the plot unfolds.

      The couples, linked by the fifteen-year friendship between Debs and Mitch, aim to escape to nature, reconnect with each other, and relieve their daily stresses. However, the nature of these stresses remains unclear; while both Debs and Melanie are writers, we know little about their work or its significance. Debs’ acclaimed novel, hailed as an emotional masterpiece, is never named, and when Melanie expresses how profoundly it impacted her, she simply refers to the protagonist as “the lead character.”

      Mitch's profession is ambiguous – he might work in business or finance; as Josh remarks during a tense moment while chopping wood, “I don’t… know what you do, man.” Similarly, while Josh is a nature photographer, we never see him in action, which raises some doubts about his credibility. The film tries to delve deeper into the characters through their jobs, but these roles are so poorly defined that we never see them interacting with their work meaningfully.

      On the trip's first morning, Mitch and Debs set off on a snowy hike but decide to return early after narrowly avoiding a falling fir tree. This leads them to witness Josh and Melanie having sex in front of an open window. They must have been quite certain their spouses wouldn’t return early or that there was no direct view from the mountain.

      Upset, Debs wants to confront them immediately, but Mitch physically restrains her, persuading her to wait. For a time, it seems the film is heading in an intriguing direction, generating tension and humor from Josh and Melanie's attempts to hide their indiscretion while Debs and Mitch keep their knowledge concealed, all building towards a likely confrontation. However, this moment occurs less than fifteen minutes later, with Melanie, unable to handle the strain, revealing the truth.

      At this point, writer/director Nora Kirkpatrick loses any sense of focus or momentum; once the truth is disclosed, any potential for tension, intrigue, or awkward comedy vanishes. The storm serves as a basic yet effective means to trap the characters in the lodge together, but there’s little for them to do besides yell, sulk, cry, and drink.

      Humor is scarce, and since the characters and their relationships are not fully developed, we feel little impact from the betrayal and its consequences, resulting in a grim experience. Josh Gad attempts to inject humor into the material, stretching his lines out in an effort to extract laughter, though there’s little substance to work with to begin with.

      Kirkpatrick tries to revitalize the stagnant plot when Mitch finds a hidden stash of old moonshine in the boiler room. Once he starts drinking, the film gains a bit of energy, infusing Josh Gad’s performance – and eventually the entire cast – with a lively spirit as they pass the bottle around. However, it fails to recover the lost dramatic tension.

      Instead, it devolves into a series of debates and arguments centered on morality, fidelity, and fate among characters who lack depth to truly explore these themes. The film also contradicts its moral stance; during an argument between Josh and Melanie regarding who initiated the kiss, Josh states, “You cannot just kiss a woman in this day and age,” yet shortly before, Mitch drunkenly confesses his unacknowledged feelings to Debs and does just that. Later, Josh admits he kissed Melanie, and Debs reciprocates with Mitch.

      Ultimately, the film loses steam, struggling to resolve its themes or provide a satisfying conclusion to its flimsy plot and characters. While the first act hints at a cringeworthy dark comedy, it tosses aside this intriguing angle in favor of a messy, aimless, and overly verbose second and third act. Kirkpatrick reaches for mature themes surrounding aging, relationships, and the human experience, but she doesn’t delve deeply enough into the characters to explore these ideas beyond surface-level dialogue.

      Nevertheless, the cast delivers commendable performances, especially Alexandra Dadd