Filmmaking duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli took the 2020 TIFF Midnight Madness crowd by storm with their stunning debut feature Violation, an extremely dark, extremely violent exploration of trauma that transforms into a vicious revenge thriller. They’ve changed pace a little bit for their new film Honey Bunch, a curious little mind-bender that mixes and matches a huge number of genre influences with modest success. It’s a shaggy movie, overlong and sometimes frustratingly familiar in the tropes it deploys, but it also gets better as it goes along and begins to transform into something deeper than mere pastiche.
As the film begins, we see a man carrying a woman from her wheelchair and into the ocean. He kisses her, tells her that he loves her, and then seemingly submerges her into the water. We then cut to a couple driving through a wooded countryside; the same man from the cold open is behind the wheel here, speaking to a woman who looks a lot like the one we just saw being plunged to her (presumed) death. They are Diana (Grace Glowicki) and Homer (Ben Petrie), and they are travelling to a special institute for traumatic head injury victims. Diana had been in a coma after an undisclosed accident, and now has severe gaps in her memory. They are hoping that specialized care will help her recover some of these memories, as well as help with a pronounced limp that requires the use of a cane. They soon arrive at an imposing mansion, and are greeted by Farah (Kate Dickie), the keeper of the building and assistant to the renowned doctor who will be providing Diana’s care.
It’s all very mysterious and ominous, from the dark color grading of the image itself to the horror-infused soundtrack. Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli shoot the mansion like a gothic horror movie, all dark corridors and long, winding hallways. Portraits of the doctor’s deceased wife hang in every room, gazing down upon the patients. Diana and Homer settle in, even joking about how Farah reminds them of Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Soon, a man named Joseph (Jason Isaacs) arrives with his daughter, Josephina (India Brown). She too has suffered a head trauma, and begins engaging in memory recovery sessions and physical therapy with Diana.
Honey Bunch offers a fairly straightforward setup, but the filmmakers almost instantly begin playing narrative and formal tricks meant to mimic Diana’s fragile mental state. She loses time, sitting in a bathtub in broad daylight and then snapping to in total darkness. Homer will excuse himself and leave a room and suddenly reappear after what seems like either seconds or hours. Further, Diana seems to be seeing things that aren’t actually there (or are they?); a body crouches in a dark corner and vomits, while figures appear fleetingly in windows or in doorways. A stroll through the lush surrounding forest winds up at a dangerous precipice, as the trail dead-ends at a precarious cliff overlooking a waterfall. What exactly is going on here, and why does Homer seem to already know Farah and Joseph? Everyone seems to be hiding something, including the fate of the good doctor’s beloved wife, who may or may not have committed suicide at that very same waterfall. The various narrative threads grow thick with innuendo and creepy vibes, culminating in a sort of fugue state involving brain surgery that may or may not have happened. Are these hallucinations? Visions? Memories?
Glowicki and Petrie, both accomplished filmmakers in their own right and a real-life couple, give offbeat, peculiar performances. They feel particularly modern, despite the film being set in a nebulous time period, with several details signifying the late 1970s. For their part, the filmmakers are certainly playing with a specific kind of ‘70s-era British horror film aesthetic (lots of quick zooms and soft, diffuse lighting). It’s a strange mixture, sometimes approaching a less visually aggressive approximation of someone like Peter Strickland. But the leads are charming enough that one can’t help but root for a conventional happy ending.
Things seem to reach a dramatic head at roughly the one-hour mark, at which point the film fully reveals exactly what’s going on here and for all practical purposes changes genres in the process. It’s not a twist, not exactly, but to reveal exactly what happens would be a huge disservice to future audiences. Suffice to say, the entire second half of the film drastically alters what we think we know about Diana and Homer, plumbing thematic material that makes the film a closer companion piece to Violation than it might initially appear. One wishes the first half wasn’t quite so distended, especially as many of the tricks being played wind up being red herrings (what’s the opposite of Chekov’s Gun?). Still, there’s a pretty appealing anything-goes approach to the storytelling here that works overtime in the film’s favor. For those willing to go on a bumpy ride, Honey Bunch’s final destination should make the journey worthwhile.
Published as part of TIFF 2025 — Dispatch 3.
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