Honeymoon can immediately be assumed as a scary movie, easily because it involves some paranormal situation, but the heart of the story is studying how long would the main couple hold together no matter what. How the characters flesh out their relationship and the sudden trouble of their connection instantly triumphs the whole film, until it still attempts to do something more crazy in the end for the sake of the genre. It sadly doesn't live up to what it has set up and rather turn things underwhelming, but Honeymoon is still a pretty clever psychological thriller that is a lot interesting to watch than your average horror film.
This is basically an ultimate test of a seemingly perfect marriage. The beginning already shows that nothing can keep the two apart, and it's even more clear to how strong their connection is to each other. Once it moves to the mystery, their sweet romance fades, but still doesn't abandon its core. In spite of having a possible traumatic or paranormal involvement to the new behavior of Bea, it still centers to how their relationship goes. The real horror of the film is basically having the fear of losing the loved one and suspecting the worst things to come. It is done terrifically as a slow burn, but what reveals in the end, though can be acceptable, won't be the kind of answer that people would be blown away or terrified at. But the best of the movie is how it smartly defines this couple, even when things get stranger.
Horror films today rarely finds good performances, but this movie pleasantly has two great leads. Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway convincingly shows the couple's affections. Leslie does an excellent job shifting the traits of her character, without taking the weirdness too far. While Treadaway naturally manifests his character's confusion towards the situation. The direction is slick, guided by a decent pacing. The camera-work captures a lot of beautiful shots. Though, horror movies tend to make things look ugly for the sake of being creepy, this movie does have one gross scene that you might not forget in a long time, but most of the experience looks pretty, as an illusion from the terror behind.
Honeymoon still has an underwhelming revelation that fails to be scary or anything beyond that, but the film is better when the horror is much grounded, creating an intriguing symbolism within the mystery. It never really matters where the threat comes from, the film just challenges this newlyweds and there it's already fascinating, by building a much serious conflict. This is the quality that can only be seen in indie horror. It leaves out the conventional tricks and tries to make tension out of its own. But even without trying to be scary, it still offers a good story.
