Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer's gothic horror often loses sight of its central romance in favor of its numerous references.
Like "The Shining," Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer's "Honey Bunch" opens with its characters venturing into a rural area that immediately suggests isolation from the rest of the world. The central couple, Homer (Ben Petrie) and Diana (Grace Glowicki), are headed to an experimental therapy institute where they hope to cure the memory and motor control problems Diana suffered after a serious car accident.
Directors: Dusty Mancinelli, Madeleine Sims-Fewer
Writers: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
Stars: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Jason Isaacs
As soon as the couple arrives at this remote facility, the film adopts the aesthetic of 1970s asylum thrillers, such as Gore Verbinski's "A Cure for Wellness" and Peter Strickland's neo-gialli. Homer and Diana exit their car and are confronted by a disembodied first-person perspective that observes them from a window and slowly approaches with vigilant paranoia. One of the institute's doctors, Farah (Kate Dickie), greets them with a clinical cordiality that, in contrast to her apparent tranquility, underscores a disconcerting indifference.
For the first hour of the film, "Honey Bunch" moves at a snail's pace, immersing itself in the simultaneously soothing and alienating qualities of the baroque mansion that the institute has converted into a therapy center. Slow pans and zooms encompass the sweeping interior hallways and the expansive grounds surrounding the building; the languid rhythm doesn't entirely disguise the subtle emphasis on the center's total isolation from the outside world and the numerous nooks within its walls where secrets might be hidden.
The rooms are filmed in golden tones of sunlight filtering through the windows, turning everything into a shimmering, hazy haze that foreshadows Diana's increasingly tense visions of recovered memories and other, less personal hallucinations of mysterious, distorted figures in various states of illness that haunt the halls and rooms of the vast estate.
As these unsettling details accumulate, the actors use the time to build their characters, from simple genre figures to more complex human beings. Glowicki, at first, has little to do as Diana other than cope with therapy sessions involving hypnosis and other techniques, but as Diana recovers more lost memories, she begins to irritate her once submissive and docile nature. Growing increasingly suspicious of her doctors and her husband, Diana also finds moments to connect more deeply with them, as her curiosity extends to basic human interaction, beyond the search for clues.
Already struggling to regain full mental capacity, Diana resists drawing attention to these anxieties, and Glowicki excels at minimizing the kind of role that tends toward expressionistic displays of madness in favor of subtle clues—a fleeting second glance, a forced tone of innocent curiosity used to frame indiscreet questions—that signal the woman's mounting stress.
Similarly, Petrie strikes a delicate balance between the loving and attentive husband seeking to help his wife heal and glimpses of a darker side to his personality. Homer's constant vigilance can be overwhelming, and there are hints that his suffocatingly intense focus on Diana's recovery masks guilt over past difficulties in their marriage. Likewise, the genuine warmth with which Homer tries to help Diana prevents the character from being perceived too quickly as a controlling spouse. Both protagonists delve into the ambiguities of the story to explore the contours of a long-term relationship and the ways in which severe trauma complicates it, in ways that can be as positive as they are frustrating.
Midway through, the film shifts from a slow-burning asylum thriller to a more grotesque entry in the resurgence of modern body horror, as the true nature of the treatment at the facility is revealed. This transition initially disrupts the pacing, sacrificing the carefully crafted character details in favor of a series of complications and plot twists, and largely replacing one set of cinematic touchstones with another. It must be acknowledged that the film is one of the few in the recent generation of body horror films that recognizes the genre's capacity for tragedy over allegorical statement and shock value.
However, the directors become distracted by meticulously analyzing all the sordid mutations that suddenly appear, to the detriment of both narrative tension and the subtle performances of the leads. Glowicki and Petrie devote a large portion of the second half to this analysis.
Only in the final minutes does "Honey Bunch" regain its footing, uniting its diverse stylistic and narrative elements into a coherent and thought-provoking reflection on the blurred line between the moral imperatives of lifelong commitment to another person and the selfishness that can ultimately undermine that person's well-being.
Echoing Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," it raises irresolvable questions about the ethical imperatives that arise from embracing technological advancements too hastily. Unlike many of its obvious influences, "Honey Bunch" is grounded in its characters' genuine love and desire to help, but in some ways, that makes their actions all the more horrific and disturbing.
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