The basis of all horror is simply to present the familiar in an unfamiliar way. Honeymoon, despite its brevity, takes its time introducing Bea’s (Game of Thrones' Rose Leslie) and Paul’s (Penny Dreadful's Harry Treadaway) relationship in all its fuzzy newlywed warmth, beginning with excerpts from privately-shot videos of the two gushing over one another on the eve of--you guessed it--their honeymoon. We’re guided through their affectionate interactions, the little idiosyncrasies of their relationship, and almost follow them into the bedroom, but the movie isn’t so concerned with the lascivious aspects of their marriage. The point is to illustrate that they’re very close, and seem to know each other very well.
What makes Honeymoon so engrossing is the way it patiently undermines that certainty. From the moment a bright light shines through their bedroom window in the dead of night, everything that was previously established, presented as real and true, begins to unravel. If the basis of horror is the perversion of the familiar, then it’s argument is that nothing and no one is really knowable--we know only what we’re allowed to know, or what we allow ourselves to know, about anything. Honeymoon has to rely on some genre tropes to get to its point, but it’s so tightly plotted, thematically consistent, and eminently haunting that even the familiarity of those tropes subsumes to the power of the movie’s overarching question: how well do you know the person you love?
-Brian L.
What makes Honeymoon so engrossing is the way it patiently undermines that certainty. From the moment a bright light shines through their bedroom window in the dead of night, everything that was previously established, presented as real and true, begins to unravel. If the basis of horror is the perversion of the familiar, then it’s argument is that nothing and no one is really knowable--we know only what we’re allowed to know, or what we allow ourselves to know, about anything. Honeymoon has to rely on some genre tropes to get to its point, but it’s so tightly plotted, thematically consistent, and eminently haunting that even the familiarity of those tropes subsumes to the power of the movie’s overarching question: how well do you know the person you love?
-Brian L.
Archival details
- Original URL
- https://metallifestyle.weebly.com/curtains-movie--tv-reviews/31-nights-of-horror-night-five-honeymoon
- Recovery source
- live-weebly
- Recovery date
- 2026-07-22
- Stewardship polish
- 2026-07-22
- Preservation status
- restored
- Missing assets
- None recorded
Preserved by Bloodsoaked Media · The Archives