Meet the real-life couples behind psychological marriage drama ‘Honey Bunch’

Madeleine Sims-Fewer, left, and Dusty Mancinelli pose for a portrait during the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

TORONTO — There’s a “twisted love story” at the heart of the genre-bending Canadian thriller “Honey Bunch,” but it’s rooted in the realities of long-term commitment, say the two real-life couples behind the gothic tale.

Filmmaking duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli wrote and directed the psychological drama about a car-crash survivor with faulty memory who is encouraged by her husband to try experimental treatments at a strange facility.

“Really at its heart, this is a twisted love story that asks the question: How far are you willing to go for the one that you love?,” Mancinelli said during a round of interviews at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“We were really fascinated by the ebbs and flows of love and how in the valleys — in those low points of a relationship — how those are the most important, vulnerable moments to help find new ways to recommit, to devote yourself to your partner and how that can be both horrifying and thrilling.”

It’s no coincidence that the couple turned to another duo to bring the creepy marriage story to life, with Mancinelli believing the real-life bond between stars Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie helped drive their performances.

“It really enriched the whole experience,” said Mancinelli, who also teamed with Sims-Fewer for their debut feature, “Violation.”

“We worked really closely with them developing the characters as we were writing the script. And there was a level of intimacy there, because as two couples working together creatively, we’re sharing lots of conversations about our own experiences and trying to create a really kind of authentic representation on screen for other people that hopefully can relate to these characters and their journey.”

Glowicki and Petrie, also frequent collaborators who brought their macabre horror “Dead Lover” to TIFF, said they’re used to blurring their personal and professional lives, but Glowicki still found the added layers of “Honey Bunch” extra-surreal.

“I’m super-familiar with working with my real-life husband but this was particularly unique because there was also a real-life couple behind the camera, we were playing a married couple, it was about philosophies of love,” she said.

While the story is very much fiction, it was hard not to mine personal experiences for inspiration, added Glowicki.

“To try to keep the compartments of real life and fiction separate at a certain point was just a fool’s errand. So I think we just let ourselves slip into this strange reality together.”

The facility’s staff includes another fictional married couple, an older couple played by Kate Dickie and Julian Richings with their own unique dynamic.

They’re soon joined by a father-daughter pair played by Jason Isaacs of HBO/Crave’s “The White Lotus” and India Brown of Apple TV’s “Invasion,” who are also looking for a medical miracle.

Sims-Fewer said they pursued Isaacs later than the others because they assumed he wouldn’t be available.

“And we sent him the script as this kind of Hail Mary, and then he loved it, and he really connected to the character,” she said, adding that Isaacs had yet to shoot Season 3 of “The White Lotus” at the time.

“He has a daughter and so the father-daughter relationship was something that was really meaningful to him.”

Mancinelli said Isaacs arrived on set with a fully formed perspective on the role, which Sims-Fewer described as an exploration of “almost toxic optimism.”

“We had all these ideas of his wardrobe, and he came and he was like, ‘No, my character won’t wear that. This is what my character is’,” said Mancinelli.

“It was so amazing and refreshing to have someone just who knew very specifically how they would look, how they with sound.”

“Honey Bunch” opens in select theatres Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 23, 2026.

Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press