{"id":93484,"date":"2025-07-26T07:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T07:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93484\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T07:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T07:14:11","slug":"midnight-movie-honeycomb-2022-was-made-for-summers-after-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93484\/","title":{"rendered":"Midnight Movie ‘Honeycomb’ (2022) Was Made for Summers \u2014 After Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

On Friday nights,\u00a0IndieWire After Dark<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with\u00a0midnight movies<\/a>\u00a0from any moment in\u00a0film<\/a>\u00a0history.<\/p>\n

First, the\u00a0BAIT<\/strong>: a weird genre pick and why we\u2019re exploring its specific niche\u00a0right now.\u00a0Then, the\u00a0BITE<\/strong>: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question,\u00a0\u201cIs this old cult film actually worth recommending now?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bait: Even Canadians Were Kids Once<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the muggy middle of summer, but After Dark is coming at you from the Great White North. I\u2019ve been in Montreal since Tuesday, and while my reporting on international affairs is generally pretty limited, I\u2019m happy to confirm things truly are better in Canada. Getting off the airplane and stepping onto the tarmac, my restored human rights hit like a G-force, and after an excellent breakfast this morning, I\u2019m confident New York would lose to Quebec in a battle of the bagels. <\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a> \"Superman,<\/a> <\/p>\n

Judging the Cheval Noir competition (and catching some extra titles not in my category) at Fantasia Fest, I\u2019ve seen a lot of great new movies this week \u2014\u00a0and even made time to double-back for tonight\u2019s pick, \u201cHoneycomb<\/a>.\u201d The shoestring horror film had its world premiere at Slamdance and played here in 2022.<\/p>\n

Avalon Fast is known in the Canadian genre scene, but I just learned about her watching \u201cThe Serpent\u2019s Skin.\u201d<\/a> The 22-year-old talent plays a dreamy lesbian love interest opposite Alexandra McVicker in Alice Maio Mackay\u2019s fresh demon romance. The magnetism that made her performance work in that seems to pulse beneath the premise of her earlier feature debut as a director. When a group of girls decide to abandon their lives for the woods of British Columbia, they establish a strange society with violent rituals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t bring anything I wasn\u2019t ready to share\u2026 or get blood on,\u201d says one of the teens during an early scene that suggests no one should be packing.<\/p>\n

The girls won\u2019t know how much they\u2019ve lost it until the outside world comes calling, and the boys they like from school visit the bizarre abode. Sure, that sounds a little like \u201cLord of the Flies,\u201d but why make the comparison when \u201cYellowjackets\u201d<\/a> is right there? Complete with bees, the cannibalism dramedy from Showtime was shooting in Canada around the same time as \u201cHoneycomb.\u201d Fast co-wrote the script with Emmett Roiko and became a feature filmmaker at just 19. (It\u2019s worth noting that Maio Mackay from \u201cThe Serpent\u2019s Skin\u201d is only 20 now, but who\u2019s counting?)<\/p>\n

Leaving letters to their families, and floating through feverish visuals, the girls exit their average existence to build a hive that feels more like bones of \u201cThe Virgin Suicides.\u201d At least, that\u2019s what other people tell me. Watching just the first five minutes of \u201cHoneycomb,\u201d the amateur cast and chunky script seem unlikely to induce delirium. But turning the lights off and watching another five minutes, I could already feel Fast reaching into the frame and making exciting choices unusual for any director.<\/p>\n

Before Trump 2.0 started picking fights with our neighbors, the U.S. almost always treated Canada like the good guys. Now, we\u2019re essentially restructuring our own byzantine government, and I\u2019m dreading leaving Montreal. Maybe \u201cHoneycomb\u201d will scare me away. I mean, there is something upsetting about it \u2014\u00a0something that makes this shaky 71-minute experiment (with claymation?) feel like it wasn\u2019t meant for humans at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cHoneycomb\u201d is available to buy only on Gumroad<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Bite: Screw the Yellowjackets! Let\u2019s Talk \u201cParent Trap\u201d<\/p>\n

Call me crazy, but I think we can safely assume the co-writers of \u201cHoneycomb\u201d saw \u201cMy Girl\u201d way too young. They also managed to put a surprisingly sick twist on mattress pranks \u00e0 la \u201cThe Parent Trap\u201d with an accidental murder by bee sting I can assure you I will try and fail to forget next time I require an inflatable sleeping device. Ah, broken glasses! Dead kids! Wat fun!<\/p>\n

Sleep-away slashers are a dime a dozen, but Fast\u2019s freshman feature earnestly evokes the feeling of a hot sleepy summer from your youth \u2014\u00a0when the days are long and you can actually feel yourself growing up. Textured in exquisite flaws (if you can call them that), \u201cHoneycomb\u201d lives up to its reputation as a kind of \u201cLet\u2019s Scare Jessica to Death\u201d for Canadian teens. Awkward line deliveries pair with incisive editing and intuitive direction to create a discordant sensation that put me on edge most of the time.<\/p>\n

The lo-fi special effects work well for Fast, too. Whether it\u2019s that butcher knife\/blood spray, or the piped-in buzzing from the bees, \u201cHoneycomb\u201d boasts a cursed object quality throughout. Even as you see the performers actively engaged in the production, their vulnerability and desire to \u201cwork at it\u201d makes the whole ordeal feel more dangerous. That shagginess is mostly well-managed and you can watch Fast mature in real-time as a director here. <\/p>\n

As the scenes go on, and \u201cHoneycomb\u201d settles into itself, the filmmaker rips through clever emotional insights with remarkable confidence and speed. The \u201cStrawberry Fields\u201d tattoo moment alone makes Fast\u2019s next project, fittingly called \u201cCamp,\u201d a threat to watch when it premieres this September.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be heading back to Los Angeles soon, and I guess that\u2019s for the best. The \u201cHoneycomb\u201d girls didn\u2019t quite scare me out of Canada, but I\u2019m not ready to abandon American society just yet. Instead, I\u2019ll be returning to California with the attitude of not one but two 12-year-old Lindsay Lohans. Translation? I\u2019m buying an air mattress and becoming ungovernable. (French translation? J\u2019ach\u00e8te un matelas pneumatique et je deviens ingouvernable \u2014 I think? Je ne sais pas.) <\/p>\n

IndieWire After Dark<\/a>\u00a0publishes midnight movie recommendations late-night on weekends.\u00a0Read more of our deranged recommendations and filmmaker\u00a0interviews\u2026<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday nights,\u00a0IndieWire After Dark\u00a0honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with\u00a0midnight movies\u00a0from any moment in\u00a0film\u00a0history. First, the\u00a0BAIT:…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":93485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,1020,8779,31842,31843,53,67,132,68,61816],"class_list":{"0":"post-93484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-film","10":"tag-honeycomb","11":"tag-indiewire-after-dark","12":"tag-midnight-movies","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-yellowjackets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114918304429672933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}