This review may seem late to some, but I had the pleasure of watching this motion picture relatively recently before it left theater. Also, with the October 3rd streaming date having recently arrived, I thought it’d be a good time to revisit a film which restored my faith in Ethan Coen’s work.

Honey Don’t!, starring Margaret Qualley and Chris Evans, shows us the life of amateur private investigator Honey O’Donahue, who finds herself in the middle of a convoluted plot involving a series of deaths, missing people, and a less than reputable church. This film continues a heritage of neo-noirs that Ethan Coen had maintained with his brother Joel for over 30 years. We’ve gotten many great films with neo-noir elements doused throughout, like the slacker carelessness of The Big Lebowski or the indifference which they judge their characters with, like Lewellyn Moss in No Country For Old Men. With the Coens being known for their dark humor and jaded view of people, many might expect this film to be similar tonally. It does keep that signature feel combining humor with tension and misunderstandings, Honey Don’t! adds a lighter feel at times, with many of the characters being rather endearing despite their poor decision making and fates. I believe that this is mainly due to his wife, who has recently started co-writing scripts with Coen.

Ethan Coen and his wife, Tricia Cooke, have worked on many movies together, with Cooke being the editor for some of the more recent Coen Brothers’ movies. This film isn’t their first collaboration as writers either, with the LGBTQ road trip film Drive Away Dolls coming out back in 2023. While I did not fully appreciate that film, finding its comedy a viewpoint into a world where Ethan was a worse writer, they definitely found their footing with Honey Don’t!. It’s infinitely more appealing and engrossing, with no sacrifice being made towards the atmosphere.

Many may find the ending to be somewhat upsetting, with the mystery not being solved and rather concluding with a more personal conflict for the main character, but I feel as though it adds a lot to chew on as a viewer. Honey is a lesbian, and her sexuality is present in the film through her interaction with Aubrey Plaza’s character MG Falcone, a woman working as a police officer. Without getting into any spoilers, the movie displays a mean worldview, with the people Honey falls for only leading her to misfortune and even future conflict. These people may have a backstory to why they act, but it may not fully be conveyed. To me, this communicates a sort of unknowable evil. We may not know why certain things happen to us, even if there’s a known “reason”. This executed ending is very akin to neo-noir storytelling, and I can appreciate when a movie doesn’t tie up every loose end out of an obligation to their audience.

While the mass response has been very polarizing towards this film, I personally enjoy its sense of humor combined with upsetting story beats. The resolve may seem uncooked to some, but I find it very purposeful. I think that people need to put more faith into the movies they watch. The first step is to start believing in intentionality. This is an important step, as people should be more aware that the reaction they have to a film may be the intention of the filmmaker, rather than a “mistake” that somehow made it past the editor’s eyes.