MauveMouse

Either as a straight science-fiction/horror story or a psychological exercise, an introspection of degenerating love inside a marriage, Honeymoon works efficiently because of the fantastic chemistry on display from its two protagonists. They're believable when they're sweet and tender to each other and they also convince you that things went terribly awry in a very sudden way in their relationship and that they're on the verge of their marriage's implosion. From idyllic, and sensual, and safe, their interaction switches dramatically to high levels of emotional autism, anxiety, frustration and pain. Despite being raw, brutal and shocking, the supernatural twist doesn't distract from the main question raised by the film: how does affection and commitment hold after a traumatic experience, a horrific abuse suffered by one of the partners outside the marriage. Bea feels tainted and can not communicate unselfconsciously with her husband anymore, she pretends that nothing bad has happened and she tries to hang on as long as she can to that feeling and image of normality they had before, without realizing that this way she, and implicitly her marriage, are sinking deeper into tragedy, heading for a fatal collision. A logical conclusion would be that fear and shame eat a relationship from inside, like a worm rotting a shiny big red apple, and if not confronted sooner, the finality can be but one of alienation and sorrow

There's nothing here that you haven't already seen in other backwoods / creature feature horror films. Nonetheless, Animal is entertaining, it generally moves at a quick pace, and though familiar, it offers enough elements to appreciate. Reminiscent of Pumpkinhead, Feast, I think there's even a bit of the Xenomorph in there, the creature looks really good, for me the best part about it is that there wasn't CGI involved in its creation, they're good ol' fashioned practical effects, thumbs up Chiller Films. We're not offered explanations for the monster's presence or why it is killing, it just is, hungry, very territorial and very angry, and the characters are suddenly faced with it after the typical ''sun is shining weather is sweet everybody's smiling and in good moods flirting and joking and let's roll deep into the woods'' introduction. There's lots of gore, intense chasing and disembodying scenes, so the film fits well in its genre and doesn't shy away from the blood and guts mayhem. We get the predictable courageous but stupid ''hero'' decisions followed by more killings, the creature seems to be not entirely savage and here and there it sends one thinking that it might exist as the result of a military experiment of sorts, but the film doesn't actually support that hypothesis, and at the end of the day what you see is what you get, a big bad hungry monster lurking and preying in the middle of the timbered wilderness