HONEY BUNCH
The Toronto International Film Festival (or TIFF) marks its 50th anniversary this year. TIFF 50 runs September 4-14, with the fest’s usual vast array of movies playing in venues around the downtown entertainment district. Chris Reed has boots on the ground and lots to read about like this Honey Bunch movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Honey Bunch is like a dream where you never quite make it to where you’re trying to go because you keep losing focus and getting distracted from your main goal. I mean that in the best possible way. If you enjoy nightmares, then this is the perfect film for you.
Writing-and-directing partners Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer (Violation) bring the horror, add a healthy dash of sci-fi, and wrap it all up in a beautifully designed period piece. The décor is pure 1970s and color palette a selection of browns, greens, yellows, and other earth tones, with occasional blood thrown on top. Featuring cinematography from Adam Crosby that places objects and people within evocatively composed shots, Honey Bunch proves a visual feast from start to finish.
Dressed in a Laura Dern-like wig (adding notes of David Lynch), Grace Glowicki (Until Branches Bend) stars as Diana, a woman in recovery from some kind of accident that left her with brain damage (we’ll learn more, but not at first). Except we see her, in a prologue, being possibly drowned by the man we will come to know as her husband, Homer (Ben Petrie, BlackBerry). Something is amiss in this would-be connubial bliss.
But then we cut to Diana and Homer on their way to a mysterious medical institute where, the couple hopes, Diana will undergo treatment for memory loss and other symptoms, which stem from the physical trauma she experienced. Once at the facility, run by the alternately creepy and caring Farah (Kate Dickie, Timestalker), Diana begins to have visions and seizures. Not only that, but she sees a version of herself both within those hallucinations and out on the location’s grounds.
Homer downplays much of this in true gaslighting fashion, focusing only on the positive changes in her mental state. But more and more, the directors open the possibility that the apparitions are real. Walking the line between illusion and reality, Honey Bunch keeps us guessing as to what is actually going on.
Jason Isaacs (Mass) later shows up as a father, Joseph, of a sick child, Josephina (India Brown). Yes, that doubling of the name is intentional. He appears to know the answers to our questions, but though he hints at the truth is ultimately tight-lipped. Again, think of dreamscapes where the destination remains elusively out of reach.
There’s a lot of derivative narrative here, beyond the Lynchian material. Some of the tone recalls another film with Isaacs, the 2016 A Cure for Wellness. But influences aside, Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer deliver quite a few surprises and, best of all, a consistency of tone that elevates the puzzle at the center of the drama. I sometimes rolled my eyes, but I loved almost every minute of it. Excellent soundtrack, too.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
2025 Toronto International Film Festival; Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer; Honey Bunch movie review
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