Honeymoon, like many great horror films, builds its scares around the anxieties of real life. In this case, it is the fear of married life might become. The film tells the story of Bea and Paul (Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway), a newlywed couple staying in a secluded cabin in the woods for their honeymoon. The first few days are blissful, the movie depicting the relationship between the two as playful and altogether healthy. And then one night, Bea disappears from the cabin. Paul finds her a little later disoriented in the middle of the woods. Bea passes it off as sleepwalking, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that there is something more at play.
The metaphor falls apart as the movie reaches for a genre appropriate ending. But for a good long chunk of it, the movie effectively exploits the real-life tension that exists in any romantic relationship. No matter how well you think you know someone, there's always a chance that there's a part of them that they're still hiding. Or something might happen that causes them to change. And once the blissful honeymoon period is over, one has to deal with the reality that one might not really know the person that he or she has married.
The film largely builds to this theme effectively, meting out small, strange details that indicate that something isn't quite right. The change in Bea isn't exactly subtle, but it is tied enough to real human behavior to be a little bit ambiguous. A lot of credit is owed to Rose Leslie, who makes the struggle of her character palpable, even when it doesn't entirely make sense. Leslie navigates the odd logic of the movie with aplomb, grounding the fantastic elements with compelling human frailty.
It is only in the third act that the movie loses sight of what it was doing. In its search for a typical genre conclusion, the film comes to disregard what it has built in the previous hour. The metaphor stops holding water, and the horror elements just take over. This isn't entirely a bad thing, but it's kind of disappointing given just how smart and subtly creepy the movie's first hour is. As the threats become visible, the movie becomes a little less interesting. It detaches itself from human experience in order to cling to pretty standard tropes.
This is in spite of the fact that the horror direction is pretty impressive. This is the debut feature of Leigh Janiak, who in this film displays a real command of tone and mood. She makes the turn into horror territory gradually, slowly laying the groundwork for the creepiness to follow. The film eschews the typical jump scares of modern horror cinema, and instead builds a terrific sense of unease, paying off dividends from an investment in the relationship between the characters.
Honeymoon is pretty flawed in the end, but those flaws don't entirely negate the merits of the film. It should be lauded for its smart approach to horror, the movie building something truly unsettling in its exploration of the anxieties that accompany a long-term commitment. It just couldn't find an ending that matched its theme. But given that, the movie is still a good deal more interesting than a lot of the horror movies we've been getting.
My Rating:
