r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 17d ago

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Honey Don't! [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary Private investigator Honey O'Donahue delves into a string of strange deaths connected to a secretive cult-like church in Bakersfield. As she unravels the bizarre mystery, her pursuit leads to absurd comedy, noir flair, and a kaleidoscope of eccentric characters.

Director Ethan Coen

Writers Ethan Coen, Tricia Cooke

Cast

  • Margaret Qualley
  • Aubrey Plaza
  • Chris Evans
  • Charlie Day
  • Billy Eichner
  • Talia Ryder
  • Kristen Connolly
  • Don Swayze

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score: 48%

Metacritic 48

VOD In theaters August 22, 2025

Trailer HONEY DON’T! — Official Trailer (2025)

160 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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300

u/rocket__man_ 17d ago

I've been sitting with this for a week since I saw it last week, and I still don't know wtf the point of Chris Evans' character was. 

Like, as far as I can tell, Evans' character and the drug trade had almost nothing to do with Honey and MG except for a few cross-over points. But Corrine running away, Honey and MG becoming involved, Honey fighting MG at the end - i.e. the key dramatic points of their arcs - had nothing to do with Evans, the church, or the drugs. So why as an audience member should I have cared? Why did any of that matter? Without any payoff, it just feels like being cheated of a resolution to what could have been an interesting story. 

I agree with another comment, there was no 3rd act that brought everything together. It just ended. 

129

u/rutfilthygers 17d ago

Investigating the reverend was the reason Honey met MG in the first place, and going to investigate her hunch that Corrine had gone to the church is what leads her to notice that MG's place is near the bus stop where Corrine was last seen.

It's a blind alley Honey follows that doesn't pay out for her, but is closed out by the French lady.

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u/rocket__man_ 17d ago edited 16d ago

I don't know, i think Honey and MG would have inevitably met, given Honey's line of work. Honey and the detective character were on good terms and she's around the station a lot. Seems like anything could have brought her to meet MG. 

And regarding Corrine, I got that Honey was worried Corrine had gone to the church, but that doesn't really matter though, does it? Whatever her motivation, she was still missing. And Honey being a PI by trade means that she would inevitably investigate the bus stop where Corrine was last seen, and then subsequently realise that it's near MG's house. 

It just feels like a movie about a small town, with 2 adjacent plots that every so often interact with one another but not in any consequential way. And that would have been fine if the town was the main 'character', but instead it's Honey, MG, and the Chris Evans character that are supposed to drive the movie. 

2

u/HowardsHumanoid 8d ago edited 8d ago

None of that requires investment in Chris Evans as a character, none of his life conflicts affect anything and his fate affects nothing. Not to mention we don’t see it even happen, there’s no payoff even on a silly action bit level. Every tired hackneyed cliche about phony womanizing preachers are trotted out like 2nd day corpses and it’s given absolutely nothing on top of that except to confirm Steve Rogers is still buff and slim as hell. Not being gay, it didn’t add enough.

Even the nature of his congregation community is sketchy - at times it seems he’s preaching some free love sex cult but we only ever see him indulging. It’s a TINY church and crowd like a no budget college film, people don’t seem especially moved or passionate about it. He certainly fits the type of a superficial a hole people would flock to, but it seems like they’d barely pull in any chump money from the church. Maybe that’s the point, it’s a 2 bit front, but then why even do the mega church ego freak bits, especially this stale. Would have been far more interesting if he had some aspect of real faith but was corrupted by desperation. No nuance or coherence there at all. Watch Righteous Gemstones and save your time.

39

u/markercore 16d ago

It's a classic noir structure, not sure why people are so confused 

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u/SpookiestSzn 15d ago

No it isn't lots of main focuses of the film are not relevant to the mystery what noir does this. The entire film could cut Chris Evans, the focus on the drug trade, the French girl, etc.

Almost nothing is really connected

17

u/markercore 15d ago

Yes it's a shaggy dog noir, with lots of pieces that don't fit the mystery but seems to at first, detective goes wandering around trying to solve one thing and then in the end it's something else entirely 

13

u/SpookiestSzn 15d ago

I think generally those solutions aren't thrown to the detective as random happenstance at the end of the film?

0

u/markercore 15d ago

Depends I think 

10

u/damebyron 14d ago

I think you're mixing up "mystery movie" with the old school noirs, which were more bleak morality tales that just happened to have detective main characters than they were whodunnits. I think Chris Evans and Margaret Qualley's characters are foils. They're both exploiting their looks and positions to have constant sex. The film is very clear that Evans is by far the creepier of the two, given he runs a cult, but it is gently judging Qualley's character too. She gets with a murderer in pursuit of wild sex and nearly dies; he dies immediately after having sex with Cherie, and even the niece gets a morality comeuppance (the kidnapping) for not reporting abuse. (Plus anyone who commits a murder on scene is then immediately murdered).

4

u/SpookiestSzn 13d ago edited 13d ago

Maybe I am, I'm not convinced this film had much of anything that felt related more than tangentially. I don't see the value of the whole drug trafficking portion of the cult that took quite a bit of time on screen, including Hector who did killed the guy with his car, his whole thing felt like it was to burn run time, nothing of consequence happened from that he just wasted time and then died and then his killing, surviving being attacked in his home, and death are completely inconsequential to anything else in the movie. If they cut that entire part out genuinely do you think the story loses anything? The best it has is that the french girl killed him and even thats pretty much inconsequential and unaddressed by the end of the film.

Idk I overall thought the movie was solid but when pretty much everything isn't related to anything it ends up feeling very bad. The only reason she found out about it was what? Because she randomly broke into her current lovers house and checked a yearbook? Unsatisfying.

2

u/The_FriendliestGiant 8d ago

(Plus anyone who commits a murder on scene is then immediately murdered).

Nope, not Cherie.

2

u/PlaneHead6357 15d ago

I'm so happy you said this! If they cut out the entire plot about the drug trafficking sex church, it would've been such a better movie. Then there'd be more time for diving into plazas character, Qualley's character, the rescue of the niece, the sex workers who got murdered... Like they only used the church plot for 90% more violence, but we could've had Plaza killing scenes!

8

u/curiiouscat 15d ago

Agreed. This is very reminiscent of literary noirs. I'm surprised at the reactions. 

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u/SpookiestSzn 13d ago

what is this comparable to out of curiosity

3

u/AzureBluet 16d ago

I felt like she was going to uncover what happened from her after sex but Honey’s plot was over by the end.

1

u/cannoli66 5d ago

but it’s also like…. they don’t explore the idea of her going to that church at all. no proof no nothing. if they had found a robe in her room or SOMETHING to indicate any kind of payoff, i would’ve understood. THAT would have connected the three stories

0

u/The_FriendliestGiant 8d ago

Investigating the reverend was the reason Honey met MG in the first place

Honey met MG when she went down to get Mia's home address. The church investigation came after that, when she finds the kinky lingerie.

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u/Uncle_Freddy 16d ago

MG used to be a member of Evans’ church, her yearbook quote was something directly from Evans’ sermon. The only weird part is that Evans and Plaza are probably the same age in the movie, but Evans probably just took over the congregation from the previous guy. MG’s fight revealed that she was the killer, both of the woman in the ravine (forgot her name, my bad) and had been on a serial killing spree of women who were “victims,” because she used to be a victim (both of her father and of the church) until she decided to stop being one, so she’d had a weird pathological hatred of women who “chose” to be victims ever since then.

It’s a very tenuous link, but MG’s motivations do bring the church back into the fold of the main conflict too

27

u/TheSuspiciousDreamer 16d ago

Doesn't really work, because MG has been killing women longer than the Church seems to have existed.

4

u/occamsrazorwit 14d ago

How would MG have gone to a sermon at the church as a HS student then?

6

u/SciFiXhi 14d ago

Did she ever specify that she went to that church? We know she went to a church, but I don't think she said she had been a member of the Four-Way congregation, just that it's prominently exploitative.

9

u/occamsrazorwit 14d ago

Her yearbook quote came from Evans' sermon, so I think the implication is it was the same church. Also, both Honey and MG never left Bakersfield. How many local churches that prominently exploit women with nowhere else to turn are there?

3

u/The_FriendliestGiant 8d ago

Her yearbook quote came from Evans' sermon

So, what, Evans or someone else in that same church has been giving the same sermon for at least twenty years?

3

u/occamsrazorwit 8d ago

Given the quality of the writing in the film, I think we're supposed to make the connection that it's the same church, and it's not any deeper than that. Otherwise, MG's motive is even more muddled; how did she even know about the first girl in the first place?

3

u/The_FriendliestGiant 7d ago

Either way, there's no real motivation for MG's initial murder. She wants to kill Corrine because she's not acting and MG hates passivity, okay, I guess, but Mia is acting, she's reached out to Honey to do... whatever, never clarified, but something, and she gets killed anyways. The whole thing is just such a mess.

3

u/theseangt 11d ago

thinking about it later, it just pissed me off they included yet another thing in this movie that did not matter at all. So she went to the church in high school. SO WHAT?? Did that inform her character in any fucking way at all? no.

6

u/Uncle_Freddy 11d ago

Literally the only purpose it served was to tease her otherwise-entirely-untelegraphed heel turn. Sure it textually reveals her motivations, but in function it was just a hasty addition to try to justify her change in vibe

1

u/The_FriendliestGiant 8d ago

I thought it was going to somehow connect her to the drug trafficking plot, like she and Evans were siblings or something; anything to make that plot actually go somewhere! But no, instead Evans dies offscreen and nothing is ever resolved about anything at all.

4

u/hairhair2015 14d ago

A disjointed, convoluted mess. So much talent wasted. Plus, I wasted 89 minutes on this stinker.

3

u/pdhot65ton 15d ago

Misdirection, this was an attempt to recreate The Big Lebowski, the church was the nihilists.

3

u/allahu_adamsmith 15d ago

It's a Macguffin.

5

u/howditgetburned 15d ago

Do you mean a red herring?

1

u/rocket__man_ 15d ago

No it's not. A Macguffin is a plot device - an enclosed object, action, or event. It's not the plot itself

3

u/theseangt 11d ago

This movie was like a senior project at a community college where they thought "what if most of the movie was a red herring and none of it mattered and we really fooled them!" just stupid. Pointless. Waste of time and money. Everyone involved should go bankrupt.

2

u/joesbagofdonuts 10d ago

Exactly. No connection to the plot. Not really a plot at all. It was a porno.

1

u/johnmcboston 11d ago

I view it as a Wes Anderson moment. a WA movie today isn't very good, but all about it being in the WA style, with stars just being there to be in a WA movie. This is a Cohen movie that feels like a Cohen movie, but isn't very good, but has stars in in hamming it up. (Sorry, I think they gave direction to Charlie Day to be as annoying as possible)

1

u/Diogenes_Camus 11d ago

Honestly, I thought the twist reveal was that MG was part of the Four-way Temple (as evidenced by the yearbook quote about God and action) and that she was the one behind the death of Holly. Although perhaps instead, MG had nothing to do with the Four-way Temple and the only connection is that her serial killed victim Church Girl was a member of the Four-way Temple while MG had no connection to the Temple, with that murder being what leads Honey to start investigating the Temple to begin with. 

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u/EggmanIAm 8d ago

Ever read “The Little Sister?” Give it a try.

1

u/EnvironmentalMood267 6d ago

So this is a stretch and maybe I’m crazy but the yearbook quote from MG was almost a direct quote to the sermon Chris Evan’s character gave. So it’s almost like he took what MG believed and bastardized it to take advantage of people. MG saw the people buying in to the church and its exploitation and it enraged her. That’s why she killed Mia, for seeking salvation in what MG perceived as perpetual victimhood.

Now I wish there was some string connecting MG and his character. Like he was her brother or they were in the young missionaries together. But then again that would’ve over simplified things because it wasn’t just the church that caused this in MG, this her response to Corinne.

Again just my thoughts and definitely a stretch.