Movie Review: Honeymoon [2014]

A newlywed couple Paul [Harry Treadaway] and Bea [Rose Leslie] drive to lake house for their honeymoon to spend some time alone. The place meets all creepy requirements the houses in horror movies have: skinned bear hanging on the wall, no sign of life, woods around it and silence.

Paul and Bea are madly in love, kind of hipsterish couple, without much money, but huge feelings towards each other. They are the people who can find happiness in every detail. In the very first scenes, we see their wedding videos, explaining how and why they got married, recorded in the tent, somewhere. Director and writer Leigh Janiak tries to make them one of those young couples that we meet in the streets, bars or anywhere. But soon, everything changes after Bea starts sleepwalking in the woods and Paul believes that something really bad happened to her. They suddenly stopped having sex, because she refuses, her mood transformed from happy-go-lucky to maniacal depression. Bea suffered from strange physical transformation neither she nor husband could explain.

Honeymoon features only four actors. The other two are Bea's childhood boyfriend and her creepy wife, who seems a lot troubled woman. The budget is accordingly law, however director Janiak still managed to make the film a lot creepy, just like other films she was inspired, including Aliens and Rosemary's Baby. Even before the "real" action starts, even while newlyweds are just enjoying their lives, many details around seem creepy and spooky. Especially, the scenes on the lake where you think that any minute can be a start of something horrifying.

And after the story begins to develope in expected direction, it becomes something you might not expect. There are no much surprises or twists, to the contrary, the plot is quite predictable. And even though Honeymoon is a quiet film, it's terrifying, because it mostly plays with emotions of main characters or some silent scenes. You know, for genuine horror, it is enough to create an environment that itself scares a viewer without any additional sounds or scary characters, because mind terror is the worst.

I think, just because Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway deliver properly balanced performances, expressing every feeling and emotion of their characters and because director really managed to capture their fears, Honeymoon is quite a good debut film, absolutely worth to check out. It can genuinely make you scared, that is also helped with brilliant scores and impressive cinematography.