THE STORY – After she suffers pain and memory loss from a car accident, a doting husband takes his wife to a remote experimental trauma centre, where she undergoes increasingly mysterious treatment.
THE CAST – Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Kate Dickie, Jason Isaacs, India Brown, Patricia Tulasne & Julian Richings
THE TEAM – Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli (Directors/Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 113 mins
“Honey Bunch” is the second feature from Canadian writer-director team (and real-life partners) Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli, following their 2020 debut “Violation.” Stylish, creepy, and increasingly disturbing, it’s an engaging mystery-horror that explores the dark depths of devotion.
Set in the 1970s, the film begins on a strange note, as loving husband Homer (Ben Petrie) carries his seemingly paralyzed wife Diana (Grace Glowicki) into the ocean, perhaps for a dip or perhaps for a darker purpose. Thereafter, we join the couple as they drive to a remote experimental trauma centre in the Canadian countryside, where they hope to find a cure for the pain and memory loss Diana has been experiencing, following a traumatic car accident. Upon arrival at the mysterious mansion in the woods, Homer and Diana are greeted by Farah (Kate Dickey), the assistant to the facility’s enigmatic founder, Dr Tréphine (Patricia Tulasne), whose praises she sings in almost evangelical terms. Dr Tréphine’s treatments are apparently nothing short of miraculous, but as time goes on, Diana begins to feel worse, not better, and she eventually starts questioning her husband and his dogged insistence that she’s getting better, despite her protestations.
Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli maintain a great sense of sustained tension, gradually drip-feeding details of the mystery, until a game-changing twist at the top of the third act that it would be churlish to spoil here. Suffice it to say that the film qualifies as an Old Dark House mystery thriller, not least because the house itself begins to feel like a character, with all its various things that go bump in the night.
The creepy atmosphere is extremely impressive, heightened by a number of weird hallucination sequences and some exquisitely eerie sound design work from Matthew Chan, which leads to several effective jump scares. Similarly, the world-building is excellent (especially when it comes to the detail of the antiquated medical instruments within the house) and the directors overlay the entire film with a 1970s horror aesthetic that recalls films like “The Wicker Man” or “The Omen,” complete with seemingly misty camerawork and vibrant color.
The knowing script is shot through with a dark sense of humor that allows Homer and Diane to joke that Farah gives off “serious Mrs. Danvers vibes,” amid various other macabre wisecracks. That darkness really pays off in the final act as the central twist is pushed to audacious limits, with results that are simultaneously chilling and blackly funny, and credit is most assuredly due to the writing-directing team for a tricky tonal balance.
However, the film has more on its mind than just a carefully concealed twist, as it explores meaty ideas about just how far one is prepared to go in the name of love. To that end, the audience is intriguingly kept in the dark regarding Homer’s motives – is he indeed desperate and will do whatever it takes to secure a cure for the woman he loves, or is he in some way seeking to control and manipulate her?
The performances are excellent. Like the directors, Petrie and Glowicki are also a real-life couple, and they exude a natural ease with one another. Petrie is particularly good at seeming simultaneously nerdy, sinister, and lovestruck, while Glowicki gets to play several different aspects of her character to entertaining effect. There’s also reliable support from Dickey (who pretty much specializes in cheerful creepiness) and an effective turn from British-Canadian character actor Julian Richings as the mansion’s equally creepy groundsman, while Patricia Tulasne is great value as the enigmatic doctor. On top of that, there’s strong work from Jason Isaacs, whose late arrival into the film as devoted father Joseph – whose daughter Jospehina (India Brown) is suffering from a similar brain condition to Diana – provides an intriguing echo to the main story and sheds further light on the motivations of the facility’s clients.
On the technical side, Adam Crosby’s zoomy cinematography perfectly complements the impeccable production design work, heightening the 1970s aesthetic to a degree that will bring a smile to the face of genre fans everywhere. There’s also a suitably atmospheric score from composer Andrea Boccadoro, that has presumably deliberate echoes of Pino Donaggio’s work for Argento.
Ultimately, this is a lovingly crafted medical mystery-horror, with an unexpectedly moving central story, terrific performances, and a killer 1970s aesthetic.
