CTV NEWSCHANNEL: RICHARD’s MOVIE REVIEWS FOR FRIDAY JANUARY 23, 2026!
I join the CTV NewsChanel to talk about the sci fi action flick “Mercy,” the avian drama of “H is for Hawk” and the thriller “Honey Bunch.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Madeleine Sims-Fewer’
YOU TUBE: THREE MOVIES/THIRTY SECONDS! FAST REVIEWS FOR BUSY PEOPLE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the sci fi action flick “Mercy,” the avian drama of “H is for Hawk” and the thriller “Honey Bunch.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
HONEY BUNCH: 3 STARS. “a strange story of love justifying everything.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Honey Bunch,” a new horror-thriller now playing in theatres, disturbing visions plague a woman recovering at an experimental trauma center after a brutal car accident. “Everything is gonna go back to normal… it might just take a little more time.”
CAST: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Jason Isaacs, Kate Dickie and India Brown. Directed and written by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli.
REVIEW: A gothic, unsettling study of devotion and sacrifice, “Honey Bunch” starts off odd and doubles down on its weirdness as it winds its way to the end credits.
Following her recovery from a coma that resulted in partial memory loss and physical challenges, Diana’s (Grace Glowicki) husband Homer (Ben Petrie), for reasons she doesn’t understand, enrolls her at an out-of-the-way trauma facility for experimental treatment to repair her memory and motor skills.
As the procedures intensify her fragmented memory begins to rebuild, like puzzle pieces falling into place.
Unfortunately, for another patient, Josephina (India Brown), accompanied by her father Joseph (“White Lotus’” Jason Isaacs), the unusual treatment leaves her suffering from terrible side effects.
While Joseph pushes for his daughter’s recovery, Diana’s shattered memories lead her to troubling truths about her marriage and husband’s true motives.
“Honey Bunch’s” first hour takes some time to get where its going. Directors Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer immerse the viewer in the remote facility to hammer home Diana’s isolation. By the time her memories—or are the hallucinations?—return an unsettling, unpredictable atmosphere attaches itself to the film like the buttons on a blouse.
The rhythms take some getting used to, but patience is rewarded with a bonkers second half that let’s go of building suspicion and in favor of body horror touched by tragedy and revenge. Some swing-for-the-fences story turns defy credulity but, because they are based in affection, ultimately become a look at the see saw of married life, and how blind devotion may not be a suitable relationship building block.
A throwback to the films of the 1970s, “Honey Bunch” utilizes crash zooms and other retro techniques, accentuated by Andrea Boccadoro’s eerie, irreverent score, to tell a strange story of love justifying everything.
VIOLATION: 3 ½ STARS. “changes the channel away from exploitation.”
Set in a remote, woodsy cabin on a lake, the rape-revenge film “Violation,” now streaming on Shudder, is an uncompromising, provocative film that uses a broken timeline, remote locations and graphic violence to tell a story of trauma.
Written, produced, and directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli, “Violation” begins with two couples on a weekend get-a-way. Miriam (Sims-Fewer) and Caleb (Obi Abili), a married couple on the brink of divorce, join her sister Greta (Anna Maguire) and brother-in-law Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe) at a family retreat in rural Quebec. The sisters have a fraught relationship and an underlying atmosphere of tension hangs heavy. The morning after night of drinks around the campfire Miriam wakes up as Dylan rapes her. Devastated, Miriam exacts revenge.
“Violation” is a tough watch.
Cruel and hallucinatory, it changes the channel from exploitation to a study of the way Miriam processes her trauma. Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli go deep, using shifts in the colour palette, disquieting, extreme close-ups and nature and insect symbolism to visually add to the sense of unease.
For the bulk of the film Sims-Fewer’s raw performance is played out in dialogue free sequences, placing the focus on her actions and unspoken motivations, but never providing the pay-off typically associated with revenge dramas. That makes “Violation” is something different.
A rape-revenge film that does away with the male gaze, it doesn’t sexualize its female protagonist, which changes the dynamics of what could have been a straightforward genre piece. There is an unnecessary late movie twist and some clumsy exposition early on, but as an honest portrait of a woman who turns to retaliatory violence because she feels powerless, it’s chilling.
