“Honey Bunch” (2025) follows Diana (Grace Glowicki) as her husband, Homer (Ben Petrie), takes her to an isolated treatment facility to see if she can recover her memory. While she makes great strides, she also grows suspicious as if everyone is keeping secrets from her. She pulls the thread and makes unsettling discoveries that make her question everyone, including herself, and her husband’s devotion to her. What do marriage vows mean in a world where science can defy the laws of nature? Married cowriters and codirectors Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Manicelli make an absorbing Gothic sci-fi horror film that looks like a period film. What’s going on in Canada? They are making films that bring back the best of the old without losing the new. This movie is right up there with “Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait” (2025).
Don’t let the Seventies styling fool you. Glowicki is a looker, and there is one shot where she is wearing a sweater that matches her eyes before the camera pulls back to reveal how vast and verdant the area is. She is like the second coming of Renée O’Connor except nerdier (compliment). More importantly, she is a great actor and is in complete command of the material which requires her to seem credible despite her character being an unreliable narrator because of her brain damage. Diana loves her husband, but her perspicacious eye makes it obvious that something is off about the place. There are portraits of a woman all over the house. She keeps glimpsing weird things. Farah (Kate Dickie), not the doctor, administers all the treatments and primarily consults with Homer about her progress.
Casting Dickie is like signaling that a character is a red flag. You may be familiar with her work from “The Witch” (2015) and “Game of Thrones.” Farah is dedicated to her work for personal reasons. Her husband, Delwyn (Julian Richings, another icon playing against type), seems to be an alum of the program. A close relative usually accompanies the patient. Girl dad, Joseph (Jason Isaacs), brings his daughter, Josephina (India Brown), and cheers her on as she tries to recover as if he is her coach, and he takes all the blame when she has setbacks. It is a sweet daddy daughter relationship, and Isaacs is often the heart of “Honey Bunch.” He is the only green flag that this program is positive because he clearly adores his daughter. His commitment to the program is a counterbalance to all of Diana’s suspicions. He is also a foil to Homer, who often leaves Diana alone, which gives her more time to think.
The directing duo and editor Lev Lewis effectively convey Diana’s subjective experience as she sees things that are not there as if she is having an immersive memory recall. It is not just in her mind. It feels as if it is happening now. When watching a movie with strange happenings, I like to ask if the explanation is scientific, supernatural, extraterrestrial or bad people. Homer is clearly hiding something. The dialogue consciously references “Rebecca” (1940) and “The Stepford Wives” (1975) and has the rhythm and wit of early Joss Whedon before the perv allegations. Visually it alludes to “The Shining” (1980) and sci-fi classics that if mentioned, would spoil the plot. Things get really outlandish, and if people detract from the film, it is because everything gets spelled out in the denouement.
“Honey Bunch” is jam packed with themes and does not let any drop. One favorite is how a medical setback fractures identity and makes a person feel alien to themselves. The process of caretaking is innately coupled with taking away autonomy and violent even if well intentioned and beneficial, especially when a person cannot take care of themselves. Diana is horrified when she witnesses people with diminished capacity and their caretaker accommodates it. It is an internalized ableism and revulsion that it could happen to her, and her loved one will humor her. She hates when people talk about her progress as if her existence belongs to others, not herself. There is anger inherent in the process of recovery as the sick person tries to wrest control back from the caretaker.
Petrie does a great job maintaining the humanity and duality of Homer as furtive and devoted. There is a question of whether he can love Diana unconditionally, and “Honey Bunch” answers in a provocative way. If the movie works, there are no true villains even when people physically attack one another with gusto. The characters are well-intentioned, but in conflict when their choices supplant another’s. It is kind of like when parents choose to have kids. No one asks the babies if they want to live before they are conceived. The medical decisions that a spouse or a parent makes for a loved one are taken to a monstrous extreme until it closes the loop. It is a fascinating prism of a story that sees all the pros and cons from sympathetic and terrifying angles. Do other people have the right to want you to live no matter what even more than the person undergoing the treatment? Trauma is trauma.
In a time when the studies show that men leave their wives when they get sick, “Honey Bunch” dares to ask about the benefits and drawbacks of unconditional love. It is way more satisfying than “Together” (2025), especially because Diana has the choice to run and chooses to stay and wrestle with the truth. Most of the characters are paragons of accountability. Some viewers may not like how it ends with a bang when most of the film is fairly measured and deliberate. The dynamic duo does not pull any punches and appear to be making weighty allusions to historical medical atrocities and trusts the audience to understand that while the ethics are inherently disturbing, the story makes the decision-making process seem reasonable so no one in the audience should feel self-congratulatory as if they would not make the wrong choice. More importantly, it delivers on the body horror.
“Honey Bunch” is subversive in the way that it handles gender, especially the opening and closing, which is very evocative in its imagery and implication. It plays on viewers’ assumptions of the gender of certain characters. Unfortunately, as a result, it may unintentionally make the one queer couple into the most toxic relationship of all, which defies statistics. It is usually the reverse in the real world.
After seeing a bunch of horror stinkers in February, it was a relief to get a thoughtful, well-acted and thorough horror film.
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It is so nice to have a Frankenstein tale without explicitly being Frankenstein. There is a mad scientist, and while the villagers do not bring torches, one dissatisfied customer brings a flaming crutch to burn the place down. I am willing to sign a waiver on the homicidal doppelganger trop. If “Honey Bunch” had a flaw, it was hard to discern the identity of the person whom Dr. Josephine Trephine (Patricia Tulasne) deemed unworthy of saving. Other than refusing to help Joseph with another try, it appeared that Joseph thought something else was unfair, but it was unclear what it was. In the end, the doctor’s helpers were indifferent when burning invalids (brilliantly pronounced in valids), in the crematorium but the patients and caretakers cared more about everyone’s life with the exception of one invalid and saving people from a conflagration.
