Honeymoon (2014)

To me, this movie is perfection.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I wasn't familiar with the movie "Honeymoon" prior to finding it by sheer random luck. I read through the synopsis and it sounded like something that could prove interesting. And the movie also had Rose Leslie in it, and that could prove to be a plus.Right, well, I managed to endure 40 minutes of this ordeal of a movie. And nothing of any worth or interest happened in that 40 minutes, so I just gave up on the movie out of sheer and utter boredom."Honeymoon" has a very small cast, so they had to perform quite well in order to carry the movie and they did nicely enough. But they had nothing to work with in terms of script or storyline.This was a very uneventful and very boring movie.I have absolutely no intention of returning to watch the rest of the movie, because there was zero appeal in this movie for me.

At first I liked the movie. It had lots of suspense, great acting, etc. But the ending was one of the worst endings I have ever seen. To make a long story short, this movie is about a man and a woman who get married and go on a honeymoon. The woman gets abducted by aliens, not without killing her husband first. The woman essentially dies before she adopts the personality of an alien, or something like that. Don't watch it if you like horrible stories and horrible endings.

'Honeymoon' really reminded me of a few Roman Polanski films like 'Repulsion' and 'Rosemary's Baby'. 'Honeymoon' like most well made and thematically deep psychological horror films,tries to address real- life issues by using generic tropes and distinctive cinematic horror elements. In this case, very believable and tangible marital issues and concerns are addressed by director Leigh Janiak and her co-writer Phil Graziadei.One of the very important reasons why 'Honeymoon' works is because of the way Janiak takes her time to set up and convey the sweet and tender love between Bea and Paul. She uses a beautiful opening credits sequence of Bea and Paul giving talking head style interviews for their wedding video interspersed with shots of the road during their drive to the honeymoon spot symbolising the journey they have made together in life. There is an extended unbroken long take inside the cottage where Bea introduces the different rooms to Paul and it's a beautiful and sweet sequence again underlying the sweet nature of their relationship. It's only because we believe the love between them, that we feel uneasy when things start falling apart. There is a connection between 'Honeymoon' and Polanski's 'Repulsion' in the way that both Bea and Paul start becoming more and more paranoid upon realising that they might not be completely ready for every concern and expectation that comes along with marital life which is similar to Carole's paranoia in 'Repulsion' which was borne out of her inability to cope with adulthood, sexuality and the male gaze because she was still a young child at heart and the mental disintegration takes place in somewhat of a similar fashion in both these films. The paranoia forces both Bea and Paul to change and neither of them like the changed new individuals that the other becomes on this post-marriage honeymoon trip. But 'Honeymoon' also shares a connection with Andrzej Żuławski's 'Possession' in the way it externalises marital problems in very visceral and visually disturbing ways.We have two Brits - a Scottish woman(Rose Leslie) and an Englishman(Harry Treadaway) pretending to be an American couple, but they are really good and made me believe their marriage, their love, their mutual concerns and their subsequent paranoia.Leigh Janiak gets good performances out of her actors and also elevates the film with her intricate visual storytelling choices. The hand held camera helps to add to the intimacy of the relationship between Bea and Paul. This is a solid piece of work where the director makes the most out of limited resources available to her due to the low budget.

HONEYMOON is a dreadful low budget US horror film about marital strife which becomes pronounced when the wife undergoes a mysterious transformation after encountering something in the woods. Although both characters are supposed to be American, they're played by British actors in the form of Harry Treadaway and Rose Leslie.This is the film's main fault. Treadaway and Leslie in particular really struggle with their American accents which sounded false to this British viewer. I couldn't believe them for a second, and the lack of believability thus makes this a real chore to sit through. It doesn't help that the film is full of lovey dovey stuff for the first half and then characters screaming at each other for the second. So vomit inducing followed by headache inducing, then.The film is padded out with endless conversations and sex scenes which add nothing to the plot. When the horror arises, it's very predictable, so the film-makers concentrate on the gross-out rather than genuinely horrific. Some scenes in this came close to making me feel queasy, and the end result is ultimately depressing. Add that the characters are truly obnoxious (Leslie is extremely uncomfortable and a long way from filling her role like she did in GAME OF THRONES while Treadaway has a truly obnoxious character) and you have a film that is, in a word, dreadful.