Retro

Like “The Shining,” Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer’s “Honey Bunch” begins with its characters heading deep into a rural countryside that immediately suggests isolation from the wider world. Its central couple, Homer (Ben Petrie) and Diana (Grace Glowicki), are en route to an experimental therapy institute where they hope the latter’s memory and motor control lapses from a bad car accident might be healed.

No sooner does the pair arrive at this backwoods facility than the film adopts the aesthetic of throwback ‘70s madhouse thrillers like Gore Verbinski’s “A Cure for Wellness” and Peter Strickland’s neo-gialli. Homer and Diana emerge from their car to a disembodied POV shot gazing down at them from a window and slowly zooming in with surveilling paranoia. One of the institute’s medical personnel, Farah (Kate Dickie), greets them with the kind of clinical cordiality that undercuts its outwardly soothing welcome with unnerving detachment.

For the film’s first hour, “Honey Bunch” moves at a deliberate crawl, sinking into the simultaneously soothing and alienating qualities of the baroque manor that the institute repurposed into a therapy center. Slow pans and zooms take in large hallways within and ample grounds surrounding the building, the placating pace not quite disguising the subtle emphasis on the center’s total isolation from the outside world and the many places within its walls where it might hide secrets. Rooms are filmed in golden hues of sunlight beaming through windows, rendering everything in a bright, gossamer haze that prefigures Diana’s increasingly fraught visions of recovered memories and other, less personal hallucinations of mysterious, distorted figures in various states of illness who haunt the corridors and parlors of the vast estate.

While these unsettling details accumulate, the actors use the time to build their characters out from simple genre types to more complicated human beings. Glowicki initially has little to do as Diana other than to struggle through therapy sessions involving hypnosis and other techniques, but as Diana recovers more of her lost memories, she begins to chafe against her previously compliant, docile nature. Increasingly suspecting both her doctors and her husband, Diana nonetheless also finds moments to connect deeper with them as her inquisitiveness extends to basic human interaction alongside sleuthing for clues. Diana, already struggling to regain her full mental faculties, is loath to call attention to these misgivings, and Glowicki excels for underplaying the kind of role that tends to descend into expressionistic displays of madness in favor of subtle cues — a darting second glance, a forced tone of innocent curiosity used to phrase prying questions — to signal the woman’s mounting stress.

Similarly, Petrie strikes a careful balance between the doting, attentive husband seeking to help his wife heal and flashes of a darker side to his personality. Homer’s constant hovering can be overbearing, and there are hints that his suffocatingly intense focus on Diana’s recovery masks a guilt over some past difficulties in their marriage. By the same token, the earnest warmth with which Homer attempts to help Diana prevents the character from too quickly coming across as a controlling spouse. Both leads lean into the ambiguities of the story to explore the contours of a long-term relationship and the ways that a major trauma complicates it, in ways that can be as positive as they are frustrating.

At the halfway mark, the film shifts away from a slow-burn madhouse thriller toward a more grotesque entry in the latter-day body horror revival as the true nature of the facility’s treatment is revealed. This transition initially throws off the rhythm, losing the careful parceling out of character detail in favor of a series of plot complications and reversals and largely swapping out one set of cinematic reference points for another. To the film’s credit, it’s one of the few of the recent batch of body horror pictures to recognize the genre’s capacity for tragedy over allegorical statement and shock value. 

Nonetheless, the directors get sidetracked poring over all the sordid mutations suddenly on display to the detriment of both the narrative tension and the leads’ nuanced performances. Glowicki and Petrie spend an extended portion of the second half shedding their naturalistic body language and ambiguous behavior in favor of explicit confrontations that too boldly underline what had been left unsaid to that point. Diana, Homer, and supporting characters like Farah repeatedly state aloud the film’s themes or, worse, give protracted recaps and explanations of twists as they happen.

Only in the final minutes does “Honey Bunch” regain its footing, bringing together its various stylistic and plot elements into a cohesive and thought-provoking rumination on the hazy line that separates the moral imperatives of lifelong commitment to another person from the selfishness that can ultimately undermine care for that person. Harking all the way back to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” irresolvable questions arise regarding the ethical imperatives born of embracing technological breakthroughs too rashly. Unlike many of its obvious influences, “Honey Bunch” is built on a foundation of its characters’ genuine love and desire to help, but in some ways that makes their actions all the more horrific and troubling.

Grade: B-

“Honey Bunch” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Shudder will release it in the United States.

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