Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie Review

Everything Changes After "I Do"

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 31, 2014

The mainstreaming of horror films has made them a popular point of entry for fledgling filmmakers looking for their start. When writer/director Leigh Janiak and her NYU Film School classmate and writing partner, Phil Graziadei, tired of submitting scripts to studios and decided to write something they could make independently, they borrowed the core of a classic horror tale, then stripped it down to bare essentials so that it could be told with just a few actors and one location.

Which classic story did they choose? You don't want to know. One of the most interesting tricks in Honeymoon is how long Janiak and Graziadei manage to sustain the uncertainty about what is happening to the film's newlyweds, even for savvy viewers who have seen it all. It doesn't hurt that Janiak brings a subtle but distinctive female perspective to the film that you're not really aware of until you reflect back on some of her choices. The sexual dynamism connoted by the title infuses all of Honeymoon, but Janiak expresses it in her own unique way.

The newly married couple we see in a personal wedding video at the film's opening are Bea and Paul (Rose Leslie from Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones, and Harry Treadaway, who plays Victor Frankenstein on Penny Dreadful). Very little specific background is provided about them, but it's clear that they wed on a shoestring and are honeymooning at a remote country cabin in Canada owned by Bea's family, because that's all they can afford. Bea spent her summers there as a child, but Paul knows the place only from Bea's stories. The pair are adorably upbeat and thoroughly absorbed in each other, as only young newlyweds can be. One doesn't have to be too much older and more experienced to recognize that the euphoria of being newly married will shortly give way to the practical demands of building a life together.

Indeed, Bea may already be worrying about the future. An offhand reference by Paul to his wife's "womb" triggers an unexpectedly tense reaction, as if Bea were already preparing to argue with her new husband about when to have children. (Paul retreats immediately.) A more troubling incident occurs when the couple strolls out to the sole restaurant in this remote area and discovers that it is now run by Will (Ben Huber), an old boyfriend of Bea, and his oddly remote wife, Annie (Hanna Brown). Will seems both pleased to see Bea and eager to shoo her away (perhaps because the presence of both their spouses makes their reunion somewhat awkward).

Soon Paul has even stranger things to worry about. In the middle of the night, he discovers that Bea has left the cabin. When he finds her in the woods, she is naked and shivering and claims not to recall how she got there. Then she begins to invent less-than-credible excuses not to have sex with her new husband, making Paul wonder whether Bea has started seeing Will again. She also has odd marks on her inner thighs, which Bea claims are bug bites, but Paul suspects otherwise. Whenever Paul questions his new wife, she accuses him of ruining their honeymoon.

At the core of Honeymoon is an almost universal unease that, consciously or not, afflicts almost anyone considering a long-term relationship. Do I really know this person? What if we throw in our lots together, and only then do I discover that he or she is someone other than I thought? Leslie and Treadaway give impressive performances as they chart the gradual disintegration of the trust between Bea and Paul, with Paul desperately wanting to believe Bea's reassurances but unable to ignore the mounting evidence that something is radically wrong, and Bea just as desperately trying to maintain a veneer of normalcy, even as it becomes more and more obvious that she's keeping secrets.

When director Janiak finally unveils the underlying cause of the couple's woes, the reveal feels less important than the loss of the sweetly innocent romance we first saw in the wedding video. One of the horror genre's most common weaknesses is that characters are treated as cannon fodder; they exist to be victims of whatever evil force is the story's raison d'être. But by paring this genre story to its core, Janiak and her writing partner have achieved the opposite effect. Honeymoon's two main characters overshadow the evil that attacks them, and it's Bea and Paul who leave the most lasting impression after the credits roll, even if the impression isn't a very happy one. Janiak has said that she wanted to create a sense of "contamination creeping into every scene, a slow-rotting, spoiling sensation. When you're walking home from the theatre with a friend, when you climb into bed next to your partner, hopefully there's a nagging: Who is this person next to me?" Job well done.

Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Honeymoon is the first feature film shot by Kyle Klutz, an up-and-coming cinematographer in horror cinema with numerous shorts to his credit. According to IMDb, Klutz used the Arri Alexa, which is consistent with the look of the film. Post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, from which Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced.

The Blu-ray image has the sharpness and clarity of digital photography without any of its harshness. The color palette is muted and understated without the overly darkened look that sometimes afflicts DI-adjusted filmmaking when directors and DPs are trying to establish a mood. Klutz and director Janiak use nighttime effectively, with solid blacks obscuring portions of the frame where something terrible may be lurking, but they also make sure that what you're supposed to see is clearly illuminated. Daytime scenes don't have their colors brightened or specific elements "popped" out of the frame, because that would cut against the notion that this is an ordinary couple making the best of their situation at a family-owned cabin. The actors, who can look suitably glamorous with appropriate hair and makeup (as they do in their interview for the extras), have been made up and photographed to look like everyday people, not movie stars.

Perhaps the most distinctive and brightest scenes are those on the lake where Bea and Paul go canoeing and fishing. It turns out to be a key locale.

Magnolia has placed the 87-minute film on a BD-25, which, with the HD extras, permits an average bitrate of 21.99 Mbps. Given the material's digital origination and the lack of any major action, it's an acceptable rate, and artifacts were not an issue.

Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Probably the most critical element of Honeymoon's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, is the artfully suggestive score by Heather McIntosh (Compliance), who uses everything from basic piano notes to waves of synthesized harmonics to enhance the drama and contribute to the story's discomfort. The sonic design contains basic environmental elements such as nighttime forest sounds, whirring insects and the splashing of waves from the nearby lake. There are also loud flashes and buzzes from ancient electrical systems that keep shorting out (or maybe someone is interfering with them—we're supposed to wonder). Dialogue is generally clear and distinct, except when Bea and Paul encounter the mysterious Bill, and then the conversation between Bea and her old pal is deliberately difficult to understand, because they speak in a mixture of English and (unsubtitled) French. It's like a private language, and it excludes the audience as much as it excludes Bea's new husband.

Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Actors Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway (1080i; 1.78:1; 9:04): Interviewed together, Leslie and Treadaway describe their initial reactions to the script, their approaches to their characters and the process of working together to create the relationship between Bea and Paul.



• Interview with Director Leigh Janiak (1080i; 1.78:1; 7:28): Janiak relates the history of her writing partnership with Graziadei and how they were inspired by Gareth Edwards' Monsters to try writing a project for themselves. She also discusses casting and production.



• The Worm Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:46): The scene in which Bea has to bait a fishing hook was a challenge for actress Rose Leslie. This is some of the raw footage.



• Canoe Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:33): The perils of doing your own "stunts" on the water.



• AXS TV: A Look at Honeymoon (1080i; 1.78:1; 2:23): This is a typical AXS TV promo, in which the film's theatrical trailer is expanded with interview clips.



• Trailers (1080p; 1.78:1): These trailers illustrate different marketing approaches.
• Festival Trailer Extended Version (1:55)
• Festival Teaser Trailer (1:03)
• Theatrical Trailer (1.85:1; 2:23)



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for V/H/S: Viral, The ABCs of Death 2, White Bird in a Blizzard and The Two Faces of January, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, the disc's BD-Live function could not connect to Magnolia's server on any player on which I tried it.

Honeymoon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Honeymoon shouldn't be oversold. It's a small, character-driven movie, and anyone expecting big effects and operatic villains should look elsewhere. Horror has always been most effective when it's intimate and personal. The genre was created by a 19th Century female author, Mary Shelley, who transformed her experience of miscarriage into a tale of a male scientist seeking to create life by reanimating dead tissue, only to realize he had created his own destroyer. Janiak's creative instincts clearly tend back to that wellspring, in which the things we care about most also pose us the greatest danger. Magnolia's Blu-ray is a fine presentation; so, as long as the film is approached with the right expectations, it comes highly recommended.