Honey… don’t go see this movie.

“Honey Don’t!” follows small-town private investigator Honey O’Donahue, who probes a series of strange deaths that are tied to a mysterious church.

“Honey Don’t!” is boring. Not the kind of boring where lulls eventually pay off, but relentlessly dull. The film has no mission, no shape and never builds toward anything meaningful. On virtually every front – the cinematography, score, performances and script – “Honey Don’t!” is a misfire.

Flat Craft, Hollow Sound

On a visual level, the film isn’t memorable. It shifts between several different locations, but never rises above bland. Lazy transitions and static shots only weigh it down.

The score is also surprisingly lifeless. Long stretches of the 89-minute runtime play in silence, with quiet conversations that have no stakes. Even the most dramatic moments feel hollow, lacking any sonic urgency.

Margaret Qualley (Honey O’Donahue) is one of the best actors working right now, and she carries the film with grace and wit. Everyone else, however, is forgettable. 

Chris Evans (Reverend Drew) leans into caricature. While he executes the part well, he isn’t given enough to make the role memorable. The same goes for Aubrey Plaza (MG Falcone), who brings her usual quirkiness but vanishes after fleeting minutes.

Characters Without Depth

That leads to one of the biggest problems in “Honey Don’t!”: the characters. Rather than feeling like real people, they function as puzzle pieces. The film gives you no reason to care for them beyond their billing as “main characters.” This lack of development further drags the already weak storyline.

As the runtime progresses, it becomes clear “Honey Don’t!” isn’t interested in telling an actual story. It hammers away with talking points on feminism and sexuality but never threads them into anything meaningful.

This makes the film extra frustrating: scattered jokes land here and there, but they serve no purpose. Because the characters feel fake and the story so messy, the themes and comedy dissolve into the noise.

A Wasted Opportunity

“Honey Don’t!” is an exhausting exercise that never pays off. It’s a predictable journey from start to finish with no real stakes. Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s so-called “Lesbian B-Movie Trilogy” is 0-2 so far. “Honey Don’t!” has actors with gravitas, but even they can’t rescue this disastrous script.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5