Movie · 2025 · Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Thriller · 1h 29m · R · English
Curator score: 0.5/10 (248.2K ratings)
She only has two desires, and one of them is justice.
Overview
Honey O'Donahue, a small-town private investigator, delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church.
Ratings
Curator score: 0.5/10
IMDb: 5.2/10
Letterboxd: 2.29/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 45%
Metacritic: 46
TMDB: 5.6/10
Director
Ethan Coen
Production
Focus Features, Working Title Films
Cast
Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Lera Abova, Jacnier, Gabby Beans, Talia Ryder, Charlie Day, Kristen Connolly, Josh Pafchek, Don Swayze, Lena Hall, Alexander Carstoiu, Kale Browne, Christian Antidormi, Billy Eichner, Kinna McInroe, Sean J. Dillingham, Jude Atencio, Sean Philip Glasgow
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A stylish premise and a strong cast can’t overcome the sense of a movie that keeps changing its mind about what kind of story it wants to tell. The result plays more like a shaggy, undercooked riff on noir and small-town corruption than a satisfying mystery or comedy.
Best for
Viewers who enjoy messy, anti-plot crime comedies
Fans of deadpan performances and flirtatious chemistry
People who like revisionist noir more for vibe than for payoff
Skip if
You want a tightly constructed mystery
You’re expecting the sharpest Coen-style plotting and punchlines
You’re impatient with abrupt tonal shifts and narrative detours
Overview
Honey Don’t! has the bones of a breezy neo-noir: a private eye, a weird church, suspicious deaths, and a cast that should be able to make sparks fly. But the movie keeps veering away from its own setup, trading momentum for digressions and leaving the central mystery frustratingly underpowered. It’s the kind of film where style and casting do a lot of heavy lifting while the script seems to be improvising in real time.
Worth noting
There are pleasures here, especially in the performers’ commitment to the material’s horny, deadpan energy. The movie clearly wants to be sly, sleazy, and playful, and it occasionally lands a joke or a mood. But the tonal whiplash is hard to ignore, and the story never quite earns its detours.
Bottom line
For viewers who like their crime movies loose, unserious, and a little self-sabotaging, there may be enough atmosphere to admire. For everyone else, it feels less like a twisty mystery than a collection of promising scenes in search of a movie.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Adriano Caporusso (2★) · 10686 likes
Take a shot every time this movie abruptly changes plots, you’ll be in a coma
Yashley (2★) · 7647 likes
This movie really said 'Honey Don't'... and I should've listened
mary (1.5★) · 7516 likes
I know now which Coen brother has the sauce
vivien (1.5★) · 6143 likes
Oh, Honey! It was so painfully obvious that a man is behind that camera...
katyswend (2.5★) · 5746 likes
This was not very good but everyone is very hot ❤️
1998 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 2h 1m · R · Curator 8.0/10 (147.9K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, MGM Plus, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A grounded crime spiral where bad decisions accumulate with devastating clarity instead of narrative drift.
Topics
neo-noir, crime comedy, mystery, thriller, small-town, church corruption, deadpan, queer subtext, dark humor, stylized