SYNOPSIS OF “HONEYMOON” VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES:
“Young newlyweds Paul (Harry Treadaway) and Bea (Rose Leslie) travel to a remote lake country for their honeymoon, where the promise of private romance awaits them. Shortly after arriving, Paul finds Bea wandering and disoriented in the middle of the night. As she becomes more distant and her behavior increasingly peculiar, Paul begins to suspect something more sinister than sleepwalking took place in the woods.”
MY REVIEW:
What a fucking great movie. I loved everything about this movie and more. I had first heard about this movie while listening to a podcast from KillerPOV and one of the co-host gave it rave reviews. Then when I was doing research on horror movies from 2014 this movie popped up again. As soon as I saw that it was on Netflix instant I knew I had to watch it.
What makes this movie so great? The slow burn of tension and horror and mystery and suspense. This is so hard for directors to do perfectly, and this director nailed it. As I have mentioned numerous times, I rate my movies based on how much they can captivate me and this one had me captivated from the beginning. There is not much going on in the movie, a newlywed couple escapes to the country for their honeymoon. While there, Bea ends up in a forest in the middle of night with no memory of what happens. From that point on, the movie gets really dark and sinister. What did Bea find in the forest and what exactly happened to her?
Leigh Janiak is the director of Honeymoon and this is the first time she has done a feature film. The fact that she was able to do such a tremendous job on drawing you into this movie is absolutely amazing to me. This movie does not get the credit it deserves nor the review it really should be getting from major film critics. It doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares or music cues to let you know when the big bad monster is coming. It relies on your emotions and feelings about the characters within the film.
The other thing that makes this film work is the two lead actors – Harry Treadaway (Frankenstein in Penny Dreadful) and Rose Leslie (Ygritte in Game of Thrones). Sure, their American accents aren’t great – but the chemistry that these two have is undeniable and is shown on the screen perfectly. They seem like any couple that you would know – there performance is believable which helps play off of the viewers emotions. If these performances weren’t on key, than this movie wouldn’t be as good as it is.
As I said in my first sentence I absolutely loved this movie. It scared me and gave me goosebumps and kept me captivated to the very end. There are a few questions that I wish I could have had answered but overall I like the subtle vagueness that the film left for the viewers. If you are a horror fan and you want to see a great movie that doesn’t need to rely on gore and cheap scare tricks that I highly HIGHLY suggest watching this movie as soon as you can. My final review of Honeymoon is as follows:
Concept/Story: 2/2
Style/Effect: 2/2
Atmosphere: 2/2
Scares: 2/2
Rewatchability: 2/2
TOTAL: 10/10
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