Like “The Shining,” Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer’s “Honey Bunch” begins with its characters heading deep right into a rural countryside that instantly suggests isolation from the broader world. Its central couple, Homer (Ben Petrie) and Diana (Grace Glowicki), are en path to an experimental remedy institute the place they hope the latter’s reminiscence and motor management lapses from a foul automobile accident is likely to be healed.
No sooner does the pair arrive at this backwoods facility than the movie adopts the aesthetic of throwback ‘70s madhouse thrillers like Gore Verbinski’s “A Treatment for Wellness” and Peter Strickland’s neo-gialli. Homer and Diana emerge from their automobile to a disembodied POV shot gazing down at them from a window and slowly zooming in with surveilling paranoia. One of many institute’s medical personnel, Farah (Kate Dickie), greets them with the form of scientific cordiality that undercuts its outwardly soothing welcome with unnerving detachment.
For the movie’s first hour, “Honey Bunch” strikes at a deliberate crawl, sinking into the concurrently soothing and alienating qualities of the baroque manor that the institute repurposed right into a remedy heart. Sluggish pans and zooms absorb massive hallways inside and ample grounds surrounding the constructing, the placating tempo not fairly disguising the delicate emphasis on the middle’s complete isolation from the surface world and the numerous locations inside its partitions the place it’d cover secrets and techniques. Rooms are filmed in golden hues of daylight beaming via home windows, rendering all the things in a brilliant, gossamer haze that prefigures Diana’s more and more fraught visions of recovered reminiscences and different, much less private hallucinations of mysterious, distorted figures in numerous states of sickness who hang-out the corridors and parlors of the huge property.
Whereas these unsettling particulars accumulate, the actors use the time to construct their characters out from easy style varieties to extra difficult human beings. Glowicki initially has little to do as Diana aside from to battle via remedy classes involving hypnosis and different methods, however as Diana recovers extra of her misplaced reminiscences, she begins to chafe in opposition to her beforehand compliant, docile nature. More and more suspecting each her medical doctors and her husband, Diana nonetheless additionally finds moments to attach deeper with them as her inquisitiveness extends to fundamental human interplay alongside sleuthing for clues. Diana, already struggling to regain her full psychological colleges, is loath to name consideration to those misgivings, and Glowicki excels for underplaying the form of position that tends to descend into expressionistic shows of insanity in favor of delicate cues — a darting second look, a pressured tone of harmless curiosity used to phrase prying questions — to sign the girl’s mounting stress.
Equally, Petrie strikes a cautious stability between the doting, attentive husband searching for to assist his spouse heal and flashes of a darker facet to his character. Homer’s fixed hovering could be overbearing, and there are hints that his suffocatingly intense give attention to Diana’s restoration masks a guilt over some previous difficulties of their marriage. By the identical token, the earnest heat with which Homer makes an attempt to assist Diana prevents the character from too rapidly coming throughout as a controlling partner. Each leads lean into the ambiguities of the story to discover the contours of a long-term relationship and the ways in which a significant trauma complicates it, in methods that may be as optimistic as they’re irritating.
On the midway mark, the movie shifts away from a slow-burn madhouse thriller towards a extra grotesque entry within the latter-day physique horror revival because the true nature of the ability’s remedy is revealed. This transition initially throws off the rhythm, shedding the cautious parceling out of character element in favor of a collection of plot problems and reversals and largely swapping out one set of cinematic reference factors for one more. To the movie’s credit score, it’s one of many few of the latest batch of physique horror footage to acknowledge the style’s capability for tragedy over allegorical assertion and shock worth.
Nonetheless, the administrators get sidetracked poring over all of the sordid mutations abruptly on show to the detriment of each the narrative pressure and the leads’ nuanced performances. Glowicki and Petrie spend an prolonged portion of the second half shedding their naturalistic physique language and ambiguous conduct in favor of express confrontations that too boldly underline what had been left unsaid to that time. Diana, Homer, and supporting characters like Farah repeatedly state aloud the movie’s themes or, worse, give protracted recaps and explanations of twists as they occur.
Solely within the remaining minutes does “Honey Bunch” regain its footing, bringing collectively its numerous stylistic and plot components right into a cohesive and thought-provoking rumination on the hazy line that separates the ethical imperatives of lifelong dedication to a different particular person from the selfishness that may in the end undermine look after that particular person. Harking all the way in which again to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” irresolvable questions come up concerning the moral imperatives born of embracing technological breakthroughs too rashly. In contrast to lots of its apparent influences, “Honey Bunch” is constructed on a basis of its characters’ real love and need to assist, however in some ways in which makes their actions all of the extra horrific and troubling.
Grade: B-
“Honey Bunch” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. It’s presently searching for U.S. distribution.
Need to keep updated on IndieWire’s movie critiques and demanding ideas? Subscribe right here to our newly launched e-newsletter, In Assessment by David Ehrlich, by which our Chief Movie Critic and Head Evaluations Editor rounds up the perfect new critiques and streaming picks together with some unique musings — all solely obtainable to subscribers.
