Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway) are newlyweds and very much in love, determined to go their own way with the marriage and that starts with the wedding which some of the guests found rather eccentric. For a honeymoon they have opted for a getaway in the North Carolina woods, somewhere Bea used to spend a lot of time as a young girl so it has some nostalgic value, and besides her family owns a small cottage there where the couple can stay for a few days. They have no qualms about spending all that time in each other's company, indeed they are looking forward to it what with the picturesque scenery including a large lake nearby, but the first night as they sleep after a day of lovemaking, a strange light shines onto Bea from outside...
That's your first hint that something strange is afoot, and it only gets stranger from there. Honeymoon was the first feature from director and co-writer Leigh Janiak, a modest effort - there are basically four actors in the cast, and two of them are hardly in it - but quite effective within its means and its try at commenting on how a marriage can go downhill after a promising start. You could view the whole thing as a metaphor for a union buffeted by various forces both outwith the couple's hands, and with the potential to do something positive about if only they had been more open with one another and the problems they detected early on, problems that only grew worse the further the holiday progressed.
That holiday being a microcosm of the worst possible scenario facing newlyweds. To begin with, the fear that being in love was simply a phase you were going through and once you actually move in with someone and notice all those things that twig you to the fact you were not as compatible as you thought was where this appeared to be heading, but Janiak had other aspects she wished to portray. In the same manner that David Cronenberg's remake The Fly was an allegory for a marriage rent asunder by the pressures of terminal illness, she used the apparent possession by sinister forces as an allegory for much the same thing, though what was doing the damage was very much up to personal interpretation: she certainly was not going to restrict herself to one element.
Therefore it could be the angst that a difficult pregnancy can bring on, or even an "easy" one, that triggered the shift in the relationship, or to move forward as if we were watching a lifetime of marriage in the space of ninety minutes perhaps it was the looming spectre of senile dementia that was proving the breaking point, a condition that can utterly alter a personality and have the unafflicted wondering whatever happened to the person they used to love. Of course, should you wish to see this as a conundrum of a horror movie that depicted some mysterious force messing about with a happy couple to the extent that terrible events take place, then it was very possible to regard it as that too, you really could take what you wanted away from the manner this played out.
British stars Leslie and Treadaway were somewhat saddled with generic American accents, but this did not affect their performances as we can belive Bea and Paul are the lovebirds they portrayed from the start, all the more off kilter to watch as that happiness goes horribly wrong. The first inkling we get is not so much Bea's awkward reaction to an ill-judged comment from Paul which has her pondering motherhood, something she doesn't regard herself as ready for, and more a meeting with an old pal of hers, Will (Ben Huber) who may be delighted to see her, but is behaving very strangely which prompts Paul to think he may be beating his frazzled wife (Hanna Brown). Then worse than that, after a bout of sleepwalking, he wonders if he hasn't interfered with Bea in some manner as well; at first he considers an affair, then more darkly a rape, which may be closer to the truth and adds another layer of figurative business to an already complicating subtext. With an ending that doesn't necessarily explain all, Honeymoon may frustrate some while inspired to others. Music by Heather McIntosh.
