Movie Review: Honeymoon

By Less Lee Moore

Leigh Janiak’s first directorial effort, Honeymoon, wants very much to successfully blend the feel of an indie dramedy with science fiction films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t succeed in either capacity.

Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway) are on their honeymoon. One night, Paul catches Bea sleepwaking and then things start to get genuinely weird. There’s a misdirect involving Will, a guy from Bea’s past who calls her “Trixie,” a nickname that Paul seems to have never heard before. Honeymoon seems to be doing something intriguing with the idea that perhaps Bea was raped by Will and this is causing her strange behavior. There’s also an undercurrent of an idea about Paul not really knowing Bea at all. Yet, it turns out that Bea has just been co-opted by aliens, which we figure out pretty early on. It’s a shame because those misdirects are the most compelling parts of Honeymoon and could have definitely engendered a truly great film if Janiak had made things more ambiguous: think of Zulawksi’s Possession or even Benson and Moorhead’s Resolution.

Honeymoon looks good—the cabin by the lake setting is pastoral rather than creepy—and sounds great, thanks to a score by Heather McIntosh who also worked on Compliance and The Rambler. The actors are fine, but I didn’t really believe they were in love; at times they come across as stilted or as if they were on a first date and not their honeymoon. There’s a lot of telling and not showing, which seems more like a script problem than anything else.

Janiak clearly has a gift for visual storytelling and once Bea starts acting odd, we definitely notice Rose Leslie’s acting chops. The practical effects are, for the most part, quite good and rather gross. I’m afraid that Honeymoon, however, is a disappointment. It’s not scary enough to be a decent horror or science fiction film and it’s not emotionally engaging enough to be a good drama, either.

Honeymoon will be available on iTunes/On Demand and in theaters on September 12 from Magnet Releasing.