By John Corrado
The Canadian genre film Honey Bunch serves as both the latest collaboration between actors and real life partners Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie, and the sophomore feature from co-directors Madeline Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli.
In their debut film, the ultra-gritty revenge thriller Violation, Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli showed an appetite for extreme violence. Their latest, while having a more fantastical touch to it, finds them attempting something perhaps even more ambitious; a period piece romance steeped in Gothic horror, that apes the cinematic style of the 1970s.
The film opens with Homer (Petrie) dropping off his paraplegic wife Diana (Glowicki) at a remote estate somewhere in the country (it was filmed in Owen Sound), that serves as an experimental rehabilitation facility. Diana’s memory is hazy, but she suffered some sort of accident that put her in a coma, and is reassured by Farah (Kate Dickie), who runs the facility, that she has been brought there to recover.
As fragments of memories start to come back to her, and another patient (India Brown) arrives with her father (played by Jason Isaacs), Diana starts to question if her husband has been completely upfront about her purpose for being there.
Despite some decent production design, and cinematographer Adam Crosby’s commitment to the hazy, sepia-toned, Gothic aesthetic, at times the film feels like it is taking itself a little less seriously. The mix of tones sometimes clash, and the quirkier elements of Petrie and Glowicki’s performances can occasionally feel out of place with the period setting. At nearly two hours, the film also takes too long in the first half buildup.
Though it introduces a lot of ideas, the execution can be a little messy, with some noticeable pacing issues. But Honey Bunch eventually coalesces into a mix of psychological thriller and body horror, that embraces being a B-movie throwback. The love story elements are given credibility by this being an onscreen collaboration between a real life couple, as dark and twisted as the romantic themes may be.
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