HONEY BUNCH – Review by Liz Braun
Viewers of a certain age will be thrown back in time at Honey Bunch, a clever horror entry with subversive things to say about long-term commitment.
The film is steeped in the sights and sounds of the early 1970s —real life and reel — and some of the dread on tap is rooted in movie nostalgia. The story begins as a recovering accident victim, Diana (Grace Glowicki), and her earnest husband, Homer (Ben Petrie), drive to an elegant private care facility set in a secluded spot off the main road.
Shades of Hill House and Horror Hospital. Please … don’t go down to the basement.
Diana has been brought to the facility by Homer in the hope that experimental treatment will restore her fully to health — she has had memory and mobility issues since a recent car accident. A conversation about her waking from a coma sets the scene; what has she forgotten? Once inside the care hospital, the creepiness is slowly ramped up via actual decor and possible visions. Homer seems to be behaving in a vaguely suspicious fashion, even as Diana sees bizarre and confusing events — Homer suddenly turns up naked in the dining room, a woman near her writhes in pain and illness. Is any of it real? Is she being drugged? Can Homer be trusted? Why is the landscape, all forest and rushing river, immediately menacing?
Don’t miss that aerial shot of the hedge maze, just to confirm your worst fears (and, Baby Boomers, your adolescent horror movie-going experiences.)
In the background to all this is an on-going conversation between Diana and Homer about their lengthy love affair. They talk about how they met, what they fought about, how they decided to get married. The talk builds an emotional level to the storytelling.
Their conversations are sometimes combative and often humorous, and mid-way through Honey Bunch, the horror is overtaken by black comedy.
What’s really going on at that weird-o rehab hospital is a lot of social commentary from the “in sickness or in health” department. What would you do to restore a loved one back to health? To underline the element of control at play, Jason Isaacs turns up at the facility as a father desperately trying to help his injured daughter (India Brown), just as Homer is trying to help Diana.
Also in the cast are Kate Dickie and Julian Richings as vaguely unnerving hospital staff and Patricia Tulasne as the main doctor.
Canadian writers-directors Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer (Violation) have a lot going on here, helped along greatly by cinematographer Adam Crosby and by interesting musical choices overseen by Andrea Boccadoro.
As cinematic sleight-of-hand goes, Honey Bunch manages to be simultaneously disturbing and delightful — no mean feat. The movie wraps up in a way that makes one keen to see what Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer do next.
