Sweet horror

Flawed but still fascinating, this Canadian horror flick — which made its North American debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival — is also, at times, an oddly sweet and sincere love story.

That’s an unusual genre mashup, but it could be because Honey Bunch’s creators are Ontario-based Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli (Violation), a scripting and directing team who are also partners in life.

Set in the 1970s — a decade that’s resonating right now at the movie theatre — Honey Bunch centres on husband and wife Homer and Diana, played by Ben Petrie and Grace Glowicki (also a real-life couple, who have worked together previously on The Heirloom).

After a catastrophic car crash, Diana is left with chronic pain and a brain injury that has led to short-term memory loss.

Homer, desperate for a cure, is taking Diana to an experimental medical facility housed in an isolated and gloomy old manor.

“The trauma place,” Diana calls it, which turns out to have a double meaning.

They are met by the institute’s administrator, Farah (Dept. Q’s Kate Dickie), who tells them, “If you believe in the program, you’ll get better,” which could sound hopeful or ominous, depending on your point of view.

Soon another pair arrives, Joseph (Jason Isaacs from The White Lotus) and his daughter Josephina (Invasion’s India Brown), an elite athlete who is also struggling with physical and mental issues after a rowing accident.

At first, Diana and Homer joke about the somewhat gothic atmosphere, comparing Farah to the forbidding Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s Rebecca. But Diana soon finds the house seriously oppressive, with its strange, muffled sounds and blocked staircases.

And where is the famous doctor Farah is always talking about with such reverence? And why is every single room haunted by a sad portrait of the doctor’s late wife?

As the aggressive treatment begins, Diana is bombarded by disturbing hallucinations and phantom memories. Suddenly recalling arguments with Homer, she’s unable to sort out what’s real and what’s not.

It’s clear that the men know something the women do not. Homer might seem like a doting and devoted “wife guy,” but at some point, his evasions and motivations start to feel sinister.

Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli draw on some old-school influences, including 1970s and early 1980s horror films of the “classy” kind, from Rosemary’s Baby to Don’t Look Now. There’s also a hedge maze right out of The Shining and some explicit riffs on The Stepford Wives.

There are thematic explorations of disability issues, bodily autonomy and wellness culture.

But the throughline here is Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer’s sensitive examination of love. Embodied by Glowicki and Petrie’s committed performances, this look at love is given weight and texture by their small affectionate gestures and the lived-in familiarity of their fights.

In a key flashback to before the accident, Diana wonders whether Homer will still love her when she’s sick or old or when passion has dimmed.

“Passion is easy,” Homer suggests. “Seventeen-year-olds have passion.”

It’s what comes after that interests Homer, jumping together into the unknown, to face the changes brought by time and circumstance.

“When you’ve seen every version of someone and you keep coming back, that’s romance, baby,” Homer declares.

At the same time, the film is also demonstrating that good intentions can go awry, love can be misapplied and intimacy can be terrifying.

Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer’s plotting and explication can be clunky, and there are third-act problems. The Big Reveal is painfully literal and the ensuing chaos and sudden descent into body horror lead to a tonal rupture.

But even if Honey Bunch fails at the end, it fails in an interesting way. When we finally learn the secret of the creepy manor house and its mysterious medical interventions, the story is surprisingly touching. Horrifying, of course, but touching.

winnipegfreepress.com/alisongillmor