When a film sets its locale in a cabin in the woods, it’s almost certain that its characters will not leave the same way they arrived. Writer-director Nora Kirkpatrick’s “Couples Weekend” isn’t a matter of lives ending, like the horror classics tend to be, but rather lives being unearthed and inverted. When married couple Debs (Alexandra Daddario), an author, and Josh (Daveed Diggs), a wildlife photographer, link up with Debs’ childhood best friend Mitch (Josh Gad), a successful businessman, and his wife, Melanie (Ashley Park), a cookbook writer, to ring in the New Year, what is meant to be an idyllic escape becomes a domestic nightmare.
On their first early morning, Debs and Mitch go on a hike in the snowy woods that surround the cabin. Enamored by a deer, Debs just narrowly misses jumping out of the way of the fabled falling tree in the woods. Tickled by their near-death experience, the pair excitedly decide to return early to the cabin, certain their partners won’t believe what happened. But as they approach the house, they bear witness to their spouses cheating on them with each other. Debs, ready to storm in and confront them, is stopped by Mitch, who wants to play dumb while they strategize how to approach the situation without blowing up their lives. Snowed in by a storm, the couples are forced to confront the fallout in close quarters when the secret finally slips, excavating all their qualms, desires, and insecurities to try to save their marriages.
“Couples Weekend” is plainly unremarkable. The screenplay plays its tactics of disassembling the web of relationships—spouses, lovers, and friends—too safely to be engaging. The thesis here is that affairs happen for a reason, not just from a simple lack of judgment. But Debs, Josh, Mitch, and Melanie are all too prototypical to be interesting. They all suffer from the same plague: a lack of their own personal fulfillment that boils over into their relationships. They’re boring as individuals and as couples, and there’s a large gaping void where chemistry is supposed to lie.
Kirkpatrick’s film is first and foremost a comedy, but without believability existing between the small ensemble cast, laughter is hard to come by (and the film’s dramatic scenes suffer even more). Gad is the only performer here who feels comfortable, relying on his typical flamboyant neuroses to buoy Mitch’s hysterics. Daddario, in particular, feels uneasy, and it’s hard to believe she delivered her comedic scenes with self-assuredness. When it comes to her pained anger, however, she fills the shoes of her leading role. Diggs and Park fall to the wayside for the most part, both on account of the script and their performances, where the former fights for his spotlight and the latter disappears in the presence of louder voices.
A mystery libation allows the characters to release their guard and spill every bean they possess, laying bare the intersections of their desire and dismay. It’s a very simple narrative device that allows information to flood all at once, rather than, preferably, developing over time. The circumstances of “Couples Weekend” are simply too convenient. Its simplicity hinders absorption, shielding viewers from taking in its vulnerability or lessons to heart. And with its similar struggle to elicit its intended laughs, Kirkpatrick’s film is a flat rendering of its jagged proposal.
