Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic. To my knowledge there is no audio description for this title. It is a Shudder release.
I apologize in advance for the need to peel back some layers here in order to break down why this film is Rotten. the assumption is that because it has no audio description, it must have failed. to some extent, that is a perpetual problem of horror titles, but with Honey Bunch, which certainly has some horror, likely body horror, elements, my argument is that it needed none of that. Sometimes, a deft approach is better, or the desire to push what is horrifying, instead of relying on practical effects and gore.
Honey Bunch is about a young couple who check into this experimental facility after the wife experiences total memory loss following an accident. This facility uses radical treatments to bring back her memories, and my argument is that the whole gore laden body horror section never needed to happen. What is terrifying here isn’t what we get, as that becomes a run of the mill device we seem to be getting more and more of lately. instead, imagine being at a place like this, and having your memories return. Her husband seems nice enough, doting on her, protective of her. But as she starts remembering she even dabbles in the best part of the film, which is what if the memories that are jogged back are all just the fragmented bad parts? Wouldn’t it be far more interesting to see this relationship have to pivot and reassess as her memories that come back first are all negative, thus leaving the audience wondering a bit more if he’s a good or a bad guy.
Instead, it’s a role played a bit too much like Jack Quaid in companion, where there’s always a hint of something else under the seams. We even get a second family at the center, a father (Jason Isaac’s) trying to get his daughter’s memories back. Instead, it becomes a fairly obvious film, where we can see how it leans the entire time. There is definitely a bit of a twist, which leans into the body horror a bit more, but I think the question about memory recall was far more interesting than the gory details. If every time you go into therapy, you get different memories, but all of them troubling, and not necessarily aligning with who you see in front of you, how do you deal with it?
Sometimes, I miss the horror and gore, without audio description, and I feel like I did miss something. With Honey Bunch, I see the potential in the script, but there seems to be a desire to follow the tread, and give audiences a typical film with some bloody disgusting moments to make you shudder. The thing is,directed properly, flipping this into a psychological thrilller, still allows for so many of the elements to remain.
The acting was at least fine, with Grace Ceglowicki does nice work as the female lead, enough to make em wonder if she might have been able to dig deeper, and go further.
If only we could remember a better film than Honey Bunch, a film with the potential to push into psychological horror, but instead is far more interested in the same gore every film has. The end result is a film best left forgotten.
Rotten: 5.4/10
