BHFF Review: HONEY BUNCH (2025)

Image courtesy of IMBD

By Tom Milligan

Filmmakers Madeline Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli are fascinated by the concept of memory. Their prior effort, Violation, inverted the rape-revenge formula by implementing a fragmented structure to examine the lingering effects of trauma. It was a gut-punch of a debut - bleak, patient, and thoughtful. Their latest feature, HONEY BUNCH, also uses repressed memory as a storytelling device, but this time, they’ve opted for a decidedly quirky and unexpected approach.

By coincidence, the two leads in HONEY BUNCH are the same as those I talked about in my previous BHFF review for Dead Lover: Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie. The husband-and-wife duo are solely in front of the camera this time around, and their real-life romantic and creative partnership fuels a different kind of love story featured in the former’s over-the-top, midnight madness.

After a terrible accident, Diana (Glowicki) is encouraged by her husband Homer (Petrie) to stay at a rehabilitation facility that can supposedly help her recover her lost memory. Subjected to experimental treatments, she begins to experience strange, disorienting visions. The hospital tells her it’s a side effect of the treatments and that her memory is coming back, but Grace isn’t so sure. She starts to suspect something more malicious is taking place, or perhaps she’s being haunted by spirits from the facility’s mysterious past. The arrival of Joseph (Jason Isaacs) and his daughter Josephina (India Brown) introduces another layer of intrigue.

Reminiscent in its setup and presentation of Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness, HONEY BUNCH sports a lush green color palette, with shades of yellow and blue that wash over its gothic production design. Psychological thrillers of the 70s appear to be another point of inspiration, even if it’s not explicitly stated what time period this is set in (the cars definitely match the era, though). The score by Andrea Boccodoro makes prominent use of ghostly vocalizations at key intervals.

What starts as another story about memory and trauma morphs into something fantastical that I won’t spoil. Whereas Violation was raw, grounded, and harrowing, Fewer and Mancinelli allowed themselves to be more playful this time around, with dramatic crescendos and sudden tonal shifts. Just under two hours in length, the filmmakers again ask for patience from the audience before the film’s secrets are revealed. The surreal turn the plot takes after the first hour is welcome, but a shorter runtime really could’ve tightened things up. And while it does propose some dense ethical and philosophical questions towards the finale, I will admit I was surprised by its seemingly optimistic conclusion about relationships and what is worth salvaging.

HONEY BUNCH had its East Coast premiere at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on October 20th, 2025.