Honeydew (2020) Film Review - Country Matters

Boy, those folks out in the country sure are weird aren't they? Speaking as someone who now lives in the countryside, let me just say that, yes, we really fucking are. I mean at my local church recently there was a festival devoted to textiles, and let me tell you I was as excited for that as I was all those times standing outside some thumping city club at 2AM.

Beautiful and alluring on the one hand, and dark and mysterious on the other. The countryside just hits different (did I use that right? Please don't send the Logan's Run police after me).

So it's been fertile ground for many a horror film (The Wicker Man, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of 1000 Corpses, and Two Thousand Maniacs, to name a few). Now, there is Honeydew and you know how Apostle was secretly Resident Evil 4: The Movie? Well Honeydew is basically the movie of Resident Evil 7.

The story is that Sam (Sawyer Spielberg!) and his botanist girlfriend Riley (Malin Barr) are on a camping trip so Riley can research some fungus called Sordico. You may have noticed that Sordico is similar to Monsanto - if you remove all the irrelevant letters and add in the missing ones - and that makes sense since it basically exists to ruin the livelihood of farmers. Anyway, this being a horror film, their car breaks down forcing them to camp out. Inevitably, Riley and Sam bang in their tent (nice) and run afoul of a local landowner named Eulis (Stephen D'Ambrose) who forces them off his farm.

They are forced to visit a rundown farmhouse which is nearby, to ask to use their phone to call for breakdown recovery. They are greeted by Karen (Barbara Kingsley) a very odd older woman who flits between being completely spaced out and the sort of aggressively nurturing that only a grandmother can be. Seriously, grans are like: "turn down that Werther's Original again...I dare you". Karen has a son, the strangely distant Gunni (Jamie Bradley), who doesn't speak and simply watches old cartoons over and over.

Karen plays the friendly host, but it's not long before things get...weird, as they only can when Karen's are involved. There's the breakdown help that never covers, the house's weird decor and pictures of Karen's family, and Karen feeds the pair some rather strange looking meat that I think might be pig of the long variety, if you catch my drift. Riley and Sam are vegans you see (because horror protagonists have to be inherently unlikable) - though Sam comes across as going along with it so he can get laid, when he'd rather be having steak and larger. 

Naturally after years of having his mailing address being officially under Riley's thumb, Sam becomes addicted to this strange meat. So whilst Riley's in bed wearing a towel and craving some meat of her own, Sam's upstairs feasting away. Things get weird with Gunni and Sam falls unconscious and has a Popeye inspired dream sequence (just in case director Devereux Milburn didn't seem like a pretentious bastard from his name alone). When Sam wakes up he finds both Riley and Karen missing. When he searches the barn Karen injects Sam with a drug that knocks him out. Fucking Karens!

The third act delves into the expected 'old country people turn out to be religious cultists' arc. But what Milburn does is he throws every folk/occult horror trope at the wall to see what sticks. Are you ready for this? Eulis and Karen are accomplices; they've both had their minds destroyed by Sordico; both turned to cannibalism to compensate for failed harvests (due to the mushrooms?); and they keep people as livestock/victims of a hippy commune? Oh and they think they're serving God's Will.

Gunni is not even Karen's son but some hunter they've taken prisoner and lobotomised. Something which they're going to do to both Sam and Riley. And then there's Delilah, Karen's other 'child': a disgusting, mutilated, mentally deficient wretch played by Lena Dunham...perfect casting, if you ask me. Karen and Eulis keep her a box and wheel her out every now and then to eat Gunni's meat...err not like that. Things follow predictably - Sam and Riley are tormented in a strange occult ritual, only to escape and lose to Karen and Eulis' boomer powers for the inevitable downer ending. 

Honeydew is a very odd film indeed. On paper, religious and ecological horror make for great bedfellows. But this film does very little with it and seems muddled in what it's trying to say. These people are cannibals, religious fanatics, mushroom-addled maniacs, and they're breeding people? Why not just pick one thing. Have them serve the God-Emperor Mushroom or something. You can't just spout a load of religious nonsense and then go ooh mushrooms, like it's the fucking Sixties and you think you've achieved enlightenment. 

Fair play to composer John Mehrmann, however, as he's created one of the most haunting horror soundtracks in years. He apparently utilised a combination of 'mouth sounds, bodily sound effects and percussion instruments using household objects like cutlery and water bottles', and the end result is this weird soundtrack that goes from uncomfortably upbeat to discordant and menacing.

A good soundtrack can really elevate a mediocre horror film. Just ask Sinister (2012), a film at its best when it's just Ethan Hawke alone with Christopher Young's nightmarish -tribal soundtrack. It's at its worst when it focuses on its villain - a Slipknot reject sending his ghost children to bother Ethan Hawke.

Unfortunately with Honeydew, the soundtrack is effective when the film is setting the scene - such as with the eye-catching and hauntingly lonely countryside, or the decaying farmhouse and its insane inhabitants. But when it gets to the crux of the plot and we're being bombarded with the nonsense writing, weird imagery, and directing choices, the soundtrack just becomes more shit to contend with. Like farting during Dear Evan Hansen.

Enjoyed this piece? Then check out these other reviews: Apostle; Annihilation; Jug Face; The Wicker Man; Sinister