It’s always thrilling when you can see the beginning of what you hope will be a long, seasoned career of filmmaking. Avalon Fast is a filmmaker that has immense promise, and it’s fascinating that she delivers a movie that’s so jarring and unnerving, and absolutely original. Director Fast has a great habit for making the audience uncomfortable, opening the film on a weird portrait of a woman in a honeycomb, and then contrasting it with the image of innocence with one of her characters lying along a serene field. From there, it only escalates.
A group of girl friends decides to change their typical small-town summer when young Millie approaches Jules about breaking out of a life fueled by boredom. Millie proposes all five girls move in together. Unbeknownst to everyone else, Millie has already taken the first step in securing their independence. A supposedly abandoned cabin sits far away from the town and soon makes the perfect sanctuary for anyone looking for an escape. Feeling unchallenged in their natural environments, the girls eagerly accept Millie’s offer. Not questioning the ownership of the home, the girls obediently agree to say goodbye to their families and boyfriends. Once moved in, they develop their new community; establishing guidelines and an all-red uniform, the girls settle into a comfortable routine.
Whether intentional or not, “Honeycomb” bears a striking resemblance to Ari Aster, as it’s a horror drama that unfolds with a very deliberate pace, and set mostly in the daylight. Much of “Honeycomb” revolves around the boredom of the small town life, and how easily a small society can unravel. Most of the girls in the movie take on almost a coven-like sisterhood, committing to forming their own world, most of which is only open to young men, on occasion. Along the way as they bear a larger commitment to their shared living, their personalities begin to become slightly altered. Even though they’re very tight knit and devoted to routine and rituals that bind them, they also begin startlingly violent punishments meant to keep order among them.
Shockingly enough, the entire cast are all unpaid, inexperienced actors and actresses (Rowan Wales and Jillian Frank are very good), all of whom were friends and family of director Avalon Fast. Although the inexperience of the performers does sometimes trickle in to the filming every now and then to its detriment, it also helps build on the realism and unnerving building horror. The interactions feel realistic and raw, and its their change of attitudes and approach toward living in an isolated house that feel like director Fast is turning the screws on the audience. Fast’s film is a jarring genre entry that sneaks up on you and this might work for and against it in the long run.
Fast establishes what looks like a typical teen drama and transforms it gradually in to a unusual monster that doesn’t close on a conventional note. In either case, I quite enjoyed “Honeycomb” and think Avalon Fast relays an uneasy and dark tale about adolescence, isolation, innocence, and the meaning of freedom.
Honeycomb is officially screening, virtually at the 2022 Slamdance Film Festival.