Honeymoon is a pretty short film, but it would be far better served if it were even shorter.
Movies like Honeymoon present a difficulty for review, because as designed, its effectiveness is rooted in the basic idea that the less you know going in, the better.
A further problem, though, is that there’s really not that much to it in the first place.
It wouldn’t be at all surprising to learn that this was a short film remade as a feature, because it feels in every way like an effective forty five minute story stretched far beyond its limits.
The story, as it stands, is simple: Paul (Harry Treadaway) and Bea (Game of Thrones‘ Rose Leslie, stunningly good in a difficult role), recently married, embark on a honeymoon at her parents secluded cabin. Things are going blissfully until one night, Bea disappears. Paul finds her naked, dazed and shivering in the woods. After that, things generally spiral downward…
Now, any person who has seen a genre movie ever probably have some idea where all this is going. Your first guess is probably right on the money. In fact, there’s one line near the beginning that’s so on-the-nose about where all this is going that I nearly rolled my eyes out of their sockets.
So here’s the thing:
As an audience, we know that something is up going into a film, even if the details aren’t clear. Hell, we’re counting on it! Knowing what type of movie we’re watching, we then become impatient for the people we’re watching to catch up to where we started.
And the movie isn’t building to a twist, it’s building to a reveal, which is an even more dangerous needle to thread: a twist at least recontextualizes everything you’ve seen before, placing previous events in an entirely new light; a “reveal” movie basically says: “Something is going on here. Stick around, until we decide to tell you what it is.”
You can see how a gambit like that might backfire, yes?
Paul spends so much time in denial about what’s actually happening that it becomes counterproductive for the audience. Bea’s behavior is so troubling, so rapidly, that Paul’s confusion quickly becomes grating, and the passive aggressive way he follows up on any of the hints at what’s really happening border on absurd.
And this turns out to be a major problem, as outside of Will (Ben Huber) and Annie (Hanna Brown), a troubled married couple who get roughly five minutes of screentime (in an effectively tense scene), Bea and Paul are the entire show.
It’s commendable, in a weird way, that they didn’t pad the story out with extraneous subplots to make the story feel fuller than it actually is. There’s a purity of purpose here. But it’s a double edged sword, because there simply isn’t enough content here to justify the time spent on it.
Again: this is not a problem that a short film would fall victim to…
And so, by design, the movie is forced to take its sweet time getting to the actual story. In theory, this should be a good thing, in that it gives us time to get to know the loving couple before everything goes to hell.
But the fact is, they’re a normal, happy couple.
Which means they’re basically kind of boring.
Being inside of a happy couple is a nice thing. Shared connections and inside jokes and that sort of thing. But being outside of a happy couple is… frankly, not that interesting. And a solid third of the movie is just that: a merry, notably bland pair of people who are blissfully unaware of the inexplicable and terrible events that are about to happen to them.
And there’s the double bind of the concept: for the later developments to take on an air of tragedy (as opposed to some kind of metaphorical inevitability, which would perhaps be a meatier, if more cynical, tack), the couple has to start out unironically, inarguably happy and in love and completely average. If there are already tensions, the narrative thrust is undermined.
But while we wait for things to happen, the direction by Leigh Janiak creates an eerie, discordant mood from the start. Though he relies a bit too much on close ups to simulate intimacy at the start, he has a real sense of composition and frames his cast in ways that heighten the tension, even when nothing of note is happening (…which is unfortunately often).
Treadaway and Leslie do a pretty good job of playing their affection and playfulness, but because they’re not that interesting to start, it’s basically like watching home movies until the weirdness kicks in. And once it does, the movie treads water until the last fifteen minutes, stretching the creepiness past its effective breaking point.
There is, perhaps, an interesting undercurrent of sublimated sexual jealousy at play here: Paul’s main concern seems to be that he’s no longer getting laid, and suspects that the troubles might stem from their brief encounter with man’s man (and old friend of Bea) Will. But if that’s the idea, it doesn’t come off all that well.
This all leads to an ending is the absolute perfect ending for a short film. But as the punchline to a feature length film, it’s… less than impressive.
Still, it’s difficult to be too hard on the movie. It’s well made, and has some very effective moments, which is more than can be said for most horror movies these days.
In fact, the more I think about Honeymoon, the more I appreciate it, even if that appreciation probably won’t even find its way to actually giving the film a pass. It doesn’t quite work, and yet it gets way farther than it should have given its inbuilt limitations.
Leigh Janiak? One to watch.
The movie? Slightly less so…
(NOTE: This is the teaser trailer, which gives you a pretty good idea of the mood of the thing. If you have any desire to see the movie at all, DO NOT watch the full trailer, where they basically give the game away in the very first shot.)
