Spooky film’s sweet start takes confusing turn
Blood Honey
(out of 4) Starring Shenae Grimes-Beech, Gil Bellows. Co-written and directed by Jeff Kopas. Opens Friday at Cineplex YongeDundas. 95 minutes. STC There’s something about the remoteness of the north country that’s well-suited to the horror genre. It’s serene but mostly empty — and nature, as we know, is rather unforgiving of human frailty.
So setting Blood Honey at a picturesque fishing camp accessible only by float plane and peopling it with characters who appear to have hidden motives is a good place to start.
And there’s definitely something eerie about a place where everyone exhibits a sort of hive-like mentality, regularly partaking of hooch flavoured with homemade honey.
The opening scene is also promising: two young people sit by the waterside innocently enjoying a fireworks display when they spot Jenibel’s mother on a water tower moments before she jumps to her death.
Ten years or so later, Jenibel is back to deal with her dying father, who tasks her with selling the place before making a rather showy departure of his own.
From there, things get sticky, as in confusing, and it’s rather a shame.
Jenibel, who’s been in therapy over her mother’s death, has a history of “waking dreams” where reality is hard to discern and audiences are likely to have the same experience.
Director Jeff Kopas has talent and a decent eye for imbuing scenes with subtle menace but, as co-writer of the screenplay, he also shares some responsibility for a story that doesn’t quite hang together.
There are some pretty good performances from stalwarts such as Gil Bellows as the dying dad and Don McKellar as a longtime family friend.
But Shenae Grimes-Beech as the tormented Jenibel spends too much screen time weeping and it’s not hard to see why.
She knows how it’s going to end.