Review: Goodbye Honey

Director: Max Strand

Screenplay: Todd Rawiszer

Year: 2021

Dawn is a truck driver who inherited the business from her husband. To avoid falling asleep while driving as she makes a long trip to deliver some items for a client, Dawn decides to stop in a rest area to sleep. Her plans are altered when a distressed woman goes to her truck asking for help.

Phoebe swears she just escaped from a man that kidnapped her and that she needs help to get out of there before the man finds her. However, Dawn isn’t sure if Phoebe’s story is real or a trick to rob her. What the night beholds for both of them will clear up any doubts about the integrity of Phoebe’s story.

Phoebe(Juliette Alice Gobin) and Dawn’s (Pamela Jayne Morgan; “The Manor”) encounter comes early in the movie and serves to effectively set up the suspense and tension, which accompanies the film for the rest of its runtime. Once Phoebe tells her story, Todd Rawiszer and Max Strand’s script puts us on Dawn’s side, not knowing if to believe her story or not, which helps develop tension. 

Most of the plot takes place between both women, for which both spend plenty of time on screen. Juliette Gobin does a great job, but Pamela Jayne Morgan stands out in this aspect. In both showing her doubts about Phoebe and her tiredness that is not only because of the lack of sleep for that night, Morgan does an excellent job on her interpretation of a common woman that one good day finds herself in a dire situation.

“Goodbye Honey’s” biggest enemy is its own script. While you can put on it most of the responsibility for creating tension, that is its main asset, it is also responsible for the story not flowing properly in some parts. Full of inconsistencies and plot holes, it is hard to focus on the plot until the end when too many pure chance scenarios are thrown in that chip away the story’s realism. Also, there are parts where it feels like the story is being stretched too much and some sequences are put in that completely alter the rhythm and the cherished tension that they work so hard to achieve.

“Goodbye Honey” offers a kidnapping story that starts right when the supposedly kidnapped woman escapes her captor and finds a truck driver that tries to help her. Since both women coincide on the screen, the tension mounts along with an atmosphere that makes them feel vulnerable to any attack, and the acting from both actresses pulls the viewer’s attention to the plot. However, the faulty script seems to want to counter what is achieved with the tension and acting, but luckily, it doesn’t completely do so.