‘Honey Bunch’ Review: Horror for Hopeless Romantics

Honey Bunch
Writers: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
Directors: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
Cast: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Kate Dickie, Jason Isaacs, India Brown, and Patricia Tulasne

Shades of 1970s horror resonate through every inch of Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli's sophomore feature film Honey Bunch in such a way that one could scream "winking pastiche" and be correct. There are the grand housings akin to The Shining's Overlook hotel and scenes within a foggy lake employ the marital emotions and fears of Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Even Alfred Hitchock's Rebecca gets name dropped during an early interaction between the married protagonists Diana (Grace Glowicki) and Homer (Ben Petrie). What sets this apart in weird and wonderful ways is that this is a gothic horror movie unlike anything else on the market, one that could only be made by two artists and two actors who are truly and irrevocably in love with each other. 

To the tune of Ivor Cutler's "I Worn My Elbows" does Honey Bunch begin. We first encounter Homer — bespectacled, with a tiny porn-stache straddling his upper lip — on a beach, kissing the forehead of a woman in a wheelchair. Picking her up and cradling her in his arms like she is his new bride and they're about to cross the threshold of marriage, he wades into the water. They gaze into each other's eyes. "I love you", he says, ending a cold open that fosters several layers of curiosity. A quick cut away, scored by some operatic warble, and we meet Homer and Diana together in a car. It's some point in the 1970s, as per the stylistic choice of car and wardrobe, and the two are on their way to a trauma clinic. 

Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli's picture, which they co-wrote, immediately places the viewer into a false sense of security. A woman with memory issues, being driven by a man to a clinic that she can't remember agreeing to go to? A man who "reminds" her of how she got there? This is a red flag situation if there ever was one and the filmmakers know it, carefully and meticulously setting expectations. But they're smarter than employing the same patriarchal criticism that every feminist horror film has in recent years as each moment that could be predicted through this lens is subverted, the two directors acting as stringent narrative puppet masters. At one point, Homer derides a staff member as an "old bitch," the couple joking together about patriarchal ideals. The film revolves around this narrative subterfuge in the greatest of ways, that to spoil the real story shimmying along underneath would be tantamount to film treason and, as Homer says, "they should be shot by firing squads". 

But playing along with the narrative as relayed, Diana arrives at this clinic, where the windows glisten with watchful eyes and whose staff members clip at the hedges with shears as sharp as the script. She watches as a man leaves the establishment, softly guiding an apologetic woman out while making subtly sinister eye contact. Much like Stanley Kubrick ensured the Overlook hotel is a disturbing setting by using mysterious strangers, or empty space to herald an oncoming fear, so too is this clinic, which is described as a labyrinth by treatment overseer Farah (Kate Dickie) as she praises the ground-breaking treatment of Dr Tréphine (Patricia Tulasne). 

Across the 117 minute run time of Honey Bunch, Diana is treated for her trauma, where they attempt to rebuild her lost memories. Sugar glass is placed at her feet and she is subjected to visual-light stimulation that reminds one of the torture scene within A Clockwork Orange. The couple dine together, the meals they eat designed to engage her mental acuity or lack thereof and we are presented with disturbing images that we are to discern as being from Diana's subconscious. But what do the images of herself arguing with Homer, who is seen in various forms of undress, truly mean? This is where Honey Bunch becomes unhinged and enticingly macabre, especially when Homer begins disappearing for extended periods of time. 

The relationship that Honey Bunch centres itself on is tantalisingly delicious. Glowicki and Petrie have been together as a couple since 2014, having gotten married during post-production on this feature. The chemistry between them doesn't just show, it radiates from them like they're isotopes being burnt in a nuclear reactor. The two have a splendid rapport, with in-jokes and humorous introspective dissections of their relationship. Sims-Frewer and Mancinelli are also a couple, and as the script declares intermittently, this is a film about love in all forms. Dr Tréphine's late wife looms over in painting form, as Farah mentions how "her love is in the bones of the place." And when Joseph (Jason Isaacs) and Josephina (India Brown) arrive to make use of the facility, we encounter a form of parental love.

Director of photography Adam Crosby is having extravagant fun in executing the '70s vision of Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli, whose camera crash zooms into the violent chainsaw sounds of lawn mowers, and leers at the world of Honey Bunch from above like an all-seeing eye. But it is Andrea Boccadoro's wild, schlocky score that is the real highlight of the picture. It entertains and unnerves in equal measure, booming with operatic verbosity as it erupts from the creaky floorboards, as the violent violins and intrusive woodwind almost become its own character. Glowicki has an extraordinary presence in the film in ways that cannot quite be articulated without unraveling the journey her character goes through. She is both confidently cognizant throughout her ordeal while miraculously animated as a fragile woman suffering through endless reams of resurfacing trauma.

There is fear to be captured within the idea of falling in love, but Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli are less enraptured by the free-falling of new romance. They are more curious by the lengths it takes to truly love someone; through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, warts and all. It captures love like no other horror film out there because this is a gothic romance whose scares lie in the unknown, rather than in whatever monster lurks beneath the surface. And when you're in love for long enough, the unknown is scary. The unknown keeps you bound together. Honey Bunch, through all of its visual thrills, its gooey, grimy, goopy practical effects and narrative shenanigans, is a film about love, and about the necessity of unwavering devotion in the face of the unknown.