MovieChat Forums > Honeymoon (2014) Discussion > What the movie's really about [SPOILERS]

What the movie's really about [SPOILERS]

posted 10 years ago by MesQueUnClub1995
45 replies | jump to latest

Ever since catching this the other night, there's been one thought that I've predominantly been mulling over endlessly, namely that the move itself works as an allegory of pregnancies amongst married - especially newlywed - couples. Yeah, the movie focuses around themes of inherent fears and suspicions like how well can you ever truly know someone, how do you know if 'the one' is actually the right one etc., but I'd venture that these ultimately take a backseat. Unconvinced? Well, hear me out.

Prior to the late-night woods freak-out, the first sign of discord - or indeed anything that's not sickeningly lovey-dovey-intolerably-cute couple - between Bea and Paul is when they're making breakfast and he refers to her 'womb', which is even acknowledged as a strange choice of words by the characters.

After things take a turn for the weird, the first big change in their relationship is that she keeps spurning his advances with all too familiar - almost clichéed - responses i.e. "I've got a headache", "I'm tired" - a reflection of a decreased physical intimacy that's supposed to be attached to expecting couples.

Next, Bea's distant - preoccupied, even - and they're relationship starts to deteriorate further; what she used to find funny, she no longer does etc. all of which can be causally extrapolated from the woods incident (I'll get to that in a sec). Again, supposedly mirroring how couples can lose touch and fall out with one another with a child on the way.

When it's finally revealed that there's something clearly physically wrong with Bea, it's telling that the tentacle-alien-whatever-that-is is - as earlier foreshadowed - festering in the womb. Even more fitting is how it resembles a garish, deformed umbilical cord.

Sure, you can argue that some of the above may be a bit tenuous, there's surely much too much for it to purely be a coincidence. Initially I wasn't too stoked about the film as a whole, but with the aforementioned allegorical aspect in mind, Honeymoon actually became a fiendishly clever subversion of the body-horror genre; after all, what can be more terrifying than something completely alien to the world growing inside of you for nine months?

Thoughts?

[–] mrjoseph85 10 years ago

I think you missed the mark on voicing your thoughts. I took the movie for exactly what it was. I don't think there was any deep symbolism here. *SPOILER* There were aliens in that area the couple were in and that is all. The interaction between the two was just common. I wished they would have shown the aliens at the end. Bea's transformation was awesome. I would have loved to see the final one.

[–] arizonabay6-671-900060 10 years ago

Yes there were aliens but op is correct, it is a big metaphor for the breakdown of trust in a relationship. Its quite Cronenburg like in that respect with sexual anxieties and trauma played out as body horror, or even a far more straightforward version of Zulawski's Possession.

#x22;To err is human...so...errrr..." - Gary Ki

[–] askmonroville 10 years ago

I agree. I think this is more about the breakdown/ destruction of a relationship than "space aliens".

I do like the "pregnant" allegory, though I also saw it as one for what happens when someone you love starts to develop a mental illness. What if someone you loved knew they had Alzheimers and knew "they" were slipping away and did not have too much time left before they were mentally gone?

To me the aliens were essentially a macguffin to serve the real story, which is how the 2 newlyweds react to the wife's change in personality.

PS: I am really shaking my head at all of the posts about the "lazy" or lack of an ending, when it couldn't be much clearer:

the husband is drowned and the wife is taken by the aliens. It doesn't matter what their purpose is, or whether we see what is inside the "mother ship". The story is about them, and by the time the movie ends, their story is complete.

[–] Der_Schnibbler 10 years ago

"I think you missed the mark on voicing your thoughts. I took the movie for exactly what it was."

So you lack critical thinking skills and you regret not having seen the final makeup job.

Sound like a winner.

--
"Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches."

[–] marktarnovetsky 10 years ago

dude you must be incredibly dense. anyway. the TC is 100% spot on here.

[–] tehponcho 10 years ago

Heavy spoilers ahead, don't read if you didn't watch the film.

For me this movie was about rape and the trauma that follows. Prior to the events in the woods Bea and Paul are your normal couple at their honeymoon, being very much in love and very intimate. Their love scenes together were very long which only emphasis the lack of these moments after the changing event.

When Paul tells Bea to "rest her womb" it feels very odd to her because even though he is her husband it's her body and her choice and like it or not - pregnancy is a form of violation. Your body changes and we also know that Bea is a very independent girl and she mocks her hubby for being less tough than she is, so it looked like she felt stressed and as if he is trying to urge her to get pregnant even though he probably didn't mean it like that.

We never saw what happened in the woods but the hints are very clear, Bea is left naked, covered in a disgusting bodily fluid, her nightgown is ripped away from her and her husband is convince that someone did something bad to her - rape. Bea is in denial and she starts to shy away from his touch, rejecting sexual encounters, lying about the marks on her thighs and doing everything she can in order to avoid being intimate. She basically acts like a sexual assault victim, there is no physical evidence for why she would reject her husband so to me it felt like it was the trauma that caused the change. I also noticed her misplace of words (it was obvious) and confusion, which can be explained by the trauma.

As the plot unfolds it becomes more and more clear that Bea is not in control of her mind, she starts losing her own independence, talking in "we", she refuses help when Paul wants to take her to the doctor as she bleeds from her womb yet still she desperately tries to perform an abortion on herself to remove the umbilical-like alien baby that is inside her. When Paul tied her down and starts touching her it feels almost as if he is violating her, when he shoves his hand between her thighs in order to please her we find that he can't touch her down there because she was already violated and there is something wrong inside her. Bea cries and begs Paul to help her get it out in a very disgusting shot... we find that she was impregnated by her rapist. That's when Bea breaks and tells Paul that something bad happened to her in the woods, that she couldn't see who took her but they went inside her and that they still are and that she needs to hide Paul. She also says that all that she wanted was to enjoy her honeymoon and have these last days with him before she leaves. Which to me was heartbreaking because it showed she really loved him but couldn't be with him anymore because of what happened.

When she means to kill Paul it seems like she completely lost her sanity, I truly believe she was trying to hide him and not kill him. In the last scene we see Bea completely changed watching the video of her and Paul before the horrific trauma, she looks at it with sadness knowing she can never be the way she used to be and then goes back into the woods with the other girl who went through the same event in order to go though the same ordeal again.

I think the reason why we never see the aliens is because it doesn't matter who they were, it matters that it happened and ruined both their lives and their marriage. Also Paul keeps assuming that it was Will who raped her and when we meet him for the first time it feels as if he abuses his wife (which is possibly incorrect).

This is how I understood the film, it was very disturbing to watch it. I think it was really well made and that both actors were brilliant. The only thing that kinda disappointed me was how quickly we were rid of Paul in the end.

[–] Shinobi-vs-Gast 10 years ago

Interesting theory, but what about Will and Annie? There were the same written messages and Annie also kills Will.

I still think it's about aliens.

[–] arizonabay6-671-900060 10 years ago

Yes its about aliens, but it is also about this other stuff, like the way invasion of the body snatchers was about cold war parnoia AND aliens. Subtext and stuff.

"To err is human...so...errrr..." - Gary King

[–] tehponcho 10 years ago

Yep, exactly, thank you for backing me up here ;)

[–] TheBeardedWonder 10 years ago

The problem is when a movie tries to fit in too many metaphors, which is what we have here. They present many of them, but most aren't completed or even remembered all the way until the end.

It's about being newlywed and wondering whether you really know the person. It's about rape and the aftermath. It's about expectant families. It's about male insecurity and cheating. It's about everything, yet the ending doesn't resolve a single one.

Yes they tried to go for something more, but it just didn't work...

'Get yourself a real dog. Any dog under 50 lbs is a cat and cats are pointless' - Ron Swanson

[–] MrsBuckyBarnes 9 years ago

The problem is when a movie tries to fit in too many metaphors, which is what we have here. They present many of them, but most aren't completed or even remembered all the way until the end.

It's about being newlywed and wondering whether you really know the person. It's about rape and the aftermath. It's about expectant families. It's about male insecurity and cheating. It's about everything, yet the ending doesn't resolve a single one.

mte. i think you have summed this film and its deficits up perfectly.

[–] dazednconfuuzed8 10 years ago

Totally agree with everything you said. I actually liked this movie a lot. Was excited to see my girl from GOT and Frankenstein from Penny Dreadful (both great shows BTW!)

[–] yourmakerawaits 10 years ago

He's climbin' in yo windows, he's snatchin' yo people up, tryin' to rape 'em. So y'all need to hide yo kids, hide yo wife, and hide yo husband cause they rapin' everybody out here.

The spoiler is A HAPPY ENDING!

[–] thor_sig 10 years ago

This.

[–] butterflyalyssa11 10 years ago



[–] SillyGayBoy 10 years ago

You are so dumb. You are really really dumb. Fo real. You left your fingerprints here. We're gonna find you. Home boy.

[–] nastasya_filippovna 10 years ago

I think your analysis/interpretation is pretty damn profound. I have to tell you that the rape scenario hit me too but after reading your post it just really took it to a whole new place to me, and the devil is in the details. Just a few moments in the dialogue and events, for me at least, seemed to distinguish it as a potential rape trauma than a pregnancy story, perhaps one being at the end (SPOILERS) where she said that after the alien creatures were inside her, the feeling of them inside her never went away, and she could still feel them. That appears to be very PTSD. The entire concept of loss of identity, the shame of not wanting the husband to know what happened, and the particularly strong metaphor of literally shifting into an alien being- a literal shell of what she was, in the aftermath of what happened, was a trenchantly poetic portrayal of sexual assault trauma. I know you mentioned the "womb" comment in the beginning, and I thought this was interesting because it struck me too- she took it as a pregnancy hint, but what did he say- he jokingly says, "it's because I ****** you so hard" - that struck me right away- he knew that she wasn't prepared for a child so in his fit of pique he struck back with an alpha sexual comment- it was almost like prepping the stage for a genuine sexual assault by someone who wasn't joking. Honestly you could just go on and on.
IMO there doesn't have to be a right or wrong interpretation, but this one, perhaps because of my own personal experiences, just seems to hit the nail on the head.
Thanks for writing this, I was just really impressed! :)

The vitality of a cat.

[–] Der_Schnibbler 10 years ago

"pregnancy is a form of violation"

How twisted a society must you have grown up in exactly to call that which is most natural--the process by which we propagate our species--to "violation"? Have you attended one too many cultural Marxist "feminism" classes?

You sound infected by the post-modern doublespeak.

What a weird thing to say.

--
"Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches."

[–] ToHelenBackAgain 10 years ago

...when he shoves his hand between her thighs in order to please her...

That was not a sexual touch. He was looking to see what the hell was wrong.

I think it's unambiguous that Bea was not actually present anymore, well before then. Removing the one alien growth seemed to restore her, but briefly and not completely, and as you note quite broken mentally.

Agreed otherwise, though I don't think I liked it as well as you did. I thought it bogged down and got repetitive around the middle for a while.

"Good luck finding him." "Who said anything about 'him'?"

[–] TheMichael 10 years ago

Just throwing it out there, but there's also a connection with the theme of animal cruelty. I'm not a hippie, I'm just saying: me see a bear skin, worm hooking, talking about hooking frogs on a line, and Bea gets upset when Paul kicks the ants around. Then by the end we know it was aliens being cruel to humans.

But I think the theme of alienation in a relationship is the key focus, and how we may be cruel to eachother if we look at others as though they are lower species to us. That's what happens to Bea, she's being turned into another species (metaphorical and literal alienation) and believes her cruelty to Paul is justifiable, just as we may justify putting hooks through frogs.

........... Something around that ballpark? Yes?

[–] marktarnovetsky 10 years ago

"pregnancy is a form of violation"

wow you truly are a degenerate scumbag.

[–] alwayshungryy 10 years ago

Really interesting interpretation! :)

[–] DEFINITIVEexplanation 10 years ago

you guys are really missing the point when she was forgetting everything and couldnt remember her own name.... once the cord thing is pulled out of her she starts to remember, the reason she couldnt is bc it was taking over her body. the aliens were literally stealing her identity. while there definitely can be symbolism in there of rape, thats still LITERALLY what happened in the movie

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[–] dh2573 10 years ago

The husbands recede from the picture. And now the wives (who have lost their identities/individuality ["Before I was alone, and now I'm not"]) must live on with their aliens.

That's right. Not a werewolf. Not a ghost. Not a vampire. But *beep* out-of-this-world, ex nihilo, divisive, life-sucking ALIENS.

After all, what is more unknown, more frightening, more alien than a child?

The "Honeymoon" is over.

[–] binki_ol 10 years ago

Y'all right guys, kids are f*ing evil, they destroy everything. No one should have them, they just sick...

There are no bad movies. If a movie doesn't make sense, it's a metaphore that you don't get. - MBs

[–] distant-skies 10 years ago

Nah. It was just aliens.

Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?

[–] therefdotcom 10 years ago

let me say it like this:

there are just some people who want to find meaning in even the most hollow of things. give them a white paper with a red dot of ink in the middle and they will go on for hours as to what the meaning behind it is.

[–] skc784 10 years ago

As a psychologist I'm completely with OP here, the whole movie is a male nightmare of his loved one turning into someone else - going through both psychological and bodily changes during pregnancy - AND the fact that her child now takes priority over everything else including her husband.

Movies are like dreams: they're the manifestation of repressed fears, desires, memories etc. from you REAL life, no matter how absurd and obviously unreal they seem (an alien abduction story in this case). Taking a story like this at face value is distancing those fears from yourself. It's all good though, not all of us want to face the subconscious all the time. And not all of us experience those emotions with such an intensity to start with, horror movies blow these feelings out of all proportions sometimes, that's the point. But it's there deep in our psyche, that's why they work.

[–] therefdotcom 10 years ago

as one of the leading experts in the field of modern neurology it hurts me to tell you that you are 100% wrong.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] SillyGayBoy 10 years ago

I am the leading expert Alien studying Aliens and you are all wrong.

[–] skc784 10 years ago

(Still) as a psychologist I think you guys are very funny!

NOT!

I'm deeply offended and as you can see I'll admit it too.

Seriously though, since I wrote my "analysis" I saw a couple of interviews with director Leigh Janiak and she said the whole nightmare was about the way lovers might see each other in a completely different light once the initial excitement wears off, almost as if she (from the male POV) would become a different person. So no pregnancy mentioned, but I still think the movie can be interpreted that way.

[–] SillyGayBoy 10 years ago

We were just having fun dude chill out.

[–] skc784 10 years ago

I was kidding too... :)

[–] SillyGayBoy 10 years ago

Okay.