Love, Actually… Might Kill You
A Match Made in Sci-Fi Hell
The Honeymoon Phase is what happens when a Black Mirror episode shacks up with a low-budget relationship drama, gets uncomfortably honest about love, and then locks the doors. Phillip G. Carroll Jr.’s feature debut takes the most cheerful phrase in romance—“honeymoon phase”—and gleefully asks, “Okay, but what if that’s just the trial period on your personal hell subscription?” It’s a small, contained movie with big, nasty ideas, and it makes “couples retreat” sound like a threat.
30 Days, One House, No Exit (What Could Go Wrong?)
The setup is deliciously simple: Tom and Eve, broke and in love, fake being newlyweds to join The Millennium Project, a 30-day experiment where they live in a luxurious smart-house, get everything provided, and walk away with $50,000 if they make it to the end. No leaving. No visitors. Lots of cameras. It’s basically Big Brother for people who skipped the terms and conditions. And like all good terms and conditions, the real horror is in the fine print.
The Director Will See You Now
Overseeing it all is The Director, who radiates the calm, clinical energy of a man who’s definitely done something unethical in a lab before breakfast. The experiment is supposedly about “the nature of love,” which sounds sweet until you realize it’s being run like a tech beta test by people who treat participants like glitchy software. Françoise Chau’s presence gives the whole thing a quiet menace—he’s not a cackling villain, just a researcher whose empathy already died a few experiments ago.
Rom-Com Setup, Domestic Horror Payoff
Tom and Eve’s relationship is still new, still glossy, still in that “I don’t really know your worst impulses yet” stage. Which is exactly the problem. Eve doesn’t fully know who she’s locked in with—and the house’s unblinking surveillance system isn’t there to make her feel safer. As days pass and the walls stop feeling metaphorical, Tom starts sliding from charming to controlling to outright abusive in a way that feels horribly plausible. The horror isn’t just in the sci-fi; it’s in the way a partner’s mask can slip.
Gaslighting, But Make It Experimental
Carroll leans hard into psychological tension. Eve’s reality is constantly questioned: strange behavior from Tom, passive-aggressive rules from the experiment, and the creeping suspicion that someone behind the mirrored glass is nudging them toward meltdown for the sake of “data.” When Tom insists she get pregnant—and she later realizes he literally poked holes in the condoms—it’s a moment that lands like a jump scare for anyone who’s ever had to Google “reproductive coercion.” The film weaponizes intimate betrayals better than any monster could.
Black Mirror on a Budget (In a Good Way)
The production design is minimal but sharp: a sleek, modern house that looks like an IKEA showroom for emotionally damaged people. There’s a clinical, slightly too-perfect sheen to everything—from the sterile kitchen counters to the glowing technological interfaces—that screams, “Nothing bad happens here… on camera.” You can see why Carroll compares it to Black Mirror: The Honeymoon Phase operates in that same space where sci-fi tech is just the amplifier for human ugliness. The budget may be small, but the paranoia feels huge.
Two’s Company, Three’s a Clone
Just when you think the film is going to be purely about psychological abuse and experimental ethics, it gleefully pulls the rug: the Millennium Project isn’t just a relationship study—it’s a cloning program. The Director wants to recreate his dead wife, and Tom has been cloned as part of the process. Suddenly, that shift in personality isn’t just “he was always a jerk”; it might be a different Tom entirely. Or the same Tom, revealing more of himself. Or both. Romantic, isn’t it?
Double Tom, Double Trouble
The arrival of the second Tom kicks the film from tense domestic nightmare into outright sci-fi thriller. Watching two Toms—one supposedly kind, one clearly abusive—brawl over Eve’s fate is satisfyingly unhinged. It’s the cinematic answer to the dreaded question: “Maybe he can change?” The movie responds by cloning the guy and having them throw hands in a lab. Problem solved, data collected, therapy bills doubled.
Trust Issues: The Movie
Eve’s ultimate choice between the two Toms is the emotional core of the film. She picks the one she believes is the real, loving version and escapes the lab with him, like a twisted fairy tale where “happily ever after” is just getting out the front door. And then the film drops its bleak little mic: later in bed, Tom strangles her. No clear answer is given—is this the abusive clone, or did the “good” Tom always carry that seed of violence? The ambiguity is cruel, smart, and horribly on-brand for the story Carroll’s telling.
Performances That Hurt (In the Right Way)
Chloe Carroll (Eve) carries much of the movie on her shoulders. She sells Eve’s transformation from hopeful, slightly naive partner to terrified, trapped subject trying to navigate two versions of the man she loved. There’s a rawness to her performance that keeps the horror grounded even when the cloning twists kick in. Jim Schubin as Tom gets to play both the charming boyfriend and his worst-case-scenario reflection, and he’s disturbingly believable as both.
Love, Cloning, and the Ethics Dumpster Fire
Underneath the tension and the sci-fi trappings, The Honeymoon Phase is quietly savage about a few things: the way we romanticize early relationships, the illusion that we really know the person we’re with, and the willingness of institutions to carve people apart—emotionally and literally—in the name of “progress.” The cloning twist isn’t just a gimmick; it’s a dark little metaphor about how love can be dissected, replicated, and still come out fundamentally broken. And the Director’s dead-wife project? That’s grief reimagined as a research grant from hell.
Final Verdict: ‘Til Death (or the Experiment) Do You Part
The Honeymoon Phase is a tight, mean little sci-fi horror film that punches way above its budget. It never fully escapes its indie seams—some edges are rough, a few beats on-the-nose—but it doesn’t need a spectacle budget when it has dread, good performances, and a willingness to be genuinely nasty about love. It’s romantic horror for anyone who’s looked at a couple’s Instagram and thought, “Yeah, but what happens when the filters come off?”
If you like your relationship stories with arguments, clones, surveillance, and a non-zero chance of being murdered by your boyfriend—this is your movie. Just maybe don’t watch it with someone you’ve only been dating for a few weeks. Or do. If they get too into it, at least you’ve learned something important before the honeymoon phase ends… permanently.
