HONEY BUNCH Review

Honey Bunch is a relatively new outing featured on Shudder that I had kept passing over for several days due to reasons I will get into in the Ups and Downs.

It just kind of sat there on the New Releases screen if I scrolled enough to the right on the AMC+ home page. And I'd look at it, and I'd hem and haw, and I'd end up saying "Not today" and move on. I'm honestly not sure what it was the finally drew me to the new horror feature other than that Shudder has an even newer movie now--Crazy Old Lady--and that seemed even less interesting.

So I forewent looking through all of my other streaming services for better options and decided to finally give Honey Bunch its day in court. Shudder being the mixed bag it often is, I knew this one could shake out in any damn direction.

Honey Bunch is the story of Diana, a woman married to Homer, who is recovering from a traumatic brain injury after having been in a car accident. Homer drives her into the country to a facility that claims to have revolutionary abilities to care for such injuries. The couple has nowhere else to turn, so it seems like their best bet.

Over the course of their stay at the facility, Diana starts recovering some of her lost memories. But between her visions of things that aren't really there and some of the statuses of other residents at the home, she starts doubting that the facility--and Homer--are as benevolent as they seem...

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The story goes off in directions I did not see coming, and it really seldom did what I thought it was going to. I like to be surprised! When I saw the poster and I read the plot summary on the Shudder screen, I thought for sure I had the movie pegged for at least the ending, if not the entire path there. But as the movie unfolded in the third act, I realized I was wrong, and I let myself get swept away with a story I did not predict.

A lot of independent horror follows pretty similar beats. And modern indie horror movies don't go off of their own safely designed rails all that often. And while I'm not personally claiming I am any good at predicting twisty and turny stories--I'm not--a lot of times, anyone can see where a movie is going. I'm reminded of Maika Monroe's flick Watcher; I remember knowing all along how it would come together, but hoping it would do something else. Well early on in Honey Bunch when I thought everything was so easy, I recall thinking "It would be neat if the ending did something unexpected".

And it did! The was great.

+ I cared about the characters here, and that was in no small part to the way Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie played Diana and Homer. I was invested in their tale, and I wanted to see how it resolved. There is sometimes a bit of tedium that comes with folk horror (and modern wannabe folk horror) that never really vibes with me. But Glowicki and Petrie performed their roles so well that that level of boredom never set in. I was fully engaged the whole time.

The acting around Glowicki and Petrie is never quite at their level (in spite of the talent involved--more on that in a second), but it's not enough to drag the picture down, either. But I did find that, in the rare instances that neither of our two leads were on screen, I was hoping we would cut back to them as quickly as possible.

- Jason Isaacs and Julian Richings feel wasted in thankless minor roles that don't even feel necessary to the plot. It seems weird for the film to have cast them and then do so little with them. Isaacs has something of an important role when it's all said and done (though, again, I'm not sure you still couldn't have written around him and still got to the finish line), but Richings is left kind of fumbling for anything to do.

I've been a fan of Richings ever since his immaculate turn as Death in Supernatural. So I always get up for seeing him in something new. Unfortunately, Honey Bunch fails to use him to his potential. And yeah, just like with Isaacs, it feels like you could leave his entire role on the cutting room floor and not lose anything of note.

- Speaking of plot necessity, Honey Bunch is almost two hours long, and it has a few sub-stories that really don't belong. I'd like for this to have been tidied up a bit more. I've already mentioned the subplots based on Isaacs' and Richings' characters not being needed, so I won't belabor that. But I do want to say the combination of this being folk horror and almost two hours long almost put me off watching it entirely. And that would have been a shame.

Honey Bunch was all perfectly set up to be a film that I was destined to hate. Seemingly predictable, two hours long, and embracing of folk horror identity. And then something funny happened, and I went and really liked it. The third act is a true saving grace for this one, though I wouldn't say the first two acts were anything resembling a problem. The lead acting is super strong, and the tale does enough to keep the viewer guessing. It's one of the better Shudder offerings I have seen in a minute.

🍿SCORE = 69/100