The Honeymoon Phase (Horror Movie Review)

PLOT: With their sex life on the rocks, newlyweds Tom (Jim Schubin) and Eve (Chloe Carroll) Jacobs agree to participate in a radical medical experiment. They two are offered $50,000 to spend 30 days alone together in a luxury facility while being monitored 24/7. Over time, the two discover a mortifying secret.

REVIEW: A decade spent practicing his craft on a dozen short films or so has not yet prepared Phillip G. Carroll for feature filmmaking, as his painfully preposterous feature debut THE HONEYMOON PHASE (WATCH / OWN IT HERE), released via VOD on September 29th, spends the first 45 minutes entertaining a mildly fascinating premise, only to utterly squander the promise of the central conceit with a wildly misguided third act and supremely disappointing finale. The cheaply made indie sci-fi/thriller is akin to a cinematic cul-de-sac, as it has absolutely nowhere to go in the end but to turn around and retread its steps in massive confusion. Then, out of nowhere, takes a major left turn and only becomes more lost. Although the movie has a professional patina for a first film, pristinely clinical sterility with stark bright white backdrops, and a decent turn from the director’s wife, Chloe Carroll, the performance by her screen partner Jim Schubin is woefully uneven at best, cripplingly amateurish at worst. Most damming of course is that the film isn’t at all scary. Quite ironic that after the halfway mark, THE HONEYMOON PHASE wears off in a quick hurry.

The film opens with lachrymose Tom Jacobs (Schubin) telling us the ending of the movie upfront. The movie then goes back to show us how the ending transpires. Jim and his new bride Eve (Carroll), married only one month, already have severe enough marital issues to visit a doctor. The Director (Francois Chau) of the Millennial Project suggests undergoing a radical new experiment to test the nature of their bond. Upon agreement, the two are given an injection and wake up in an upscale lab-apartment equipped with a transportation box that summons their every desire – food, alcohol, etc. Tom and Eve are given $50,000 to spend 30 days alone in the lab and work on their intimacy while being monitored throughout their stay. Although the film is told in retrospect, one of the things I admired is that it’s a sci-fi film that unfolds linearly. There are no needless time-jumps or temple-rubbing temporal loops to add unnecessary confusion. One of the things I didn’t like is how unconvincing the couple’s marital strife comes off as. We’re never given a good enough reason why Tom and Eve would join such an experiment in the first place. Their sexual and spiritual disconnection is never believably articulated.

As the days unfold inside the luxury lab, Tom and Eve grow further apart rather than closer together. They’re paid visits by The Handler (Tara Westwood) who virtually beams into the living room like Captain f*cking Spock to check in on the two. At one point Eve eats acid-laced cookies and hallucinates seeing a murder, which ultimately adds nothing much to the movie but a gratuitous slasher quickie. As we wait for far too long to understand the core of Tom and Eve’s domestic problems, the drama finally picks up when two have sex that ends in a strangely accelerated pregnancy. When the two cannot agree on the fate of the baby, their relationship is irreparable cleaved. Of course, just when we think we’re starting to make heads or tails of the story, the third act recklessly veers off the rails and crashes into sheer absurdity. A shame, as the general idea is good enough to lure you in and the performance by Carroll credible enough to carry us through. 

So too is the finale a vexing head-scratcher. I badly want to betray the ending, but will refrain for any of those still interested in seeing what good the first half of the film provides. The inherent pull of the premise alone feels, in the first half at least, like a promising Twilight Zone or Black Mirror episode. But by the time Carroll blatantly cribs Kubrick’s classic horror film by making Tom a novelist with writer’s block, whose idle scribbling are discovered in sheer terror by his nagging wife, there’s little reason to stay aboard the inevitably sinking ship. Then the movie trundles headlong into the insulting conclusion that completely undermines all that came before it, the good and the bad. No, unfortunately for Carroll, he may need to work more scriptwriting before attempting a feature-length film. The technical isn’t the problem with THE HONEYMOON PHASE…it’s how fast it wears out its welcome.