Blood Bitches: the Honeymoon Hotel Premire
Published 3.11.26
A few Wednesday's ago I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of Honeymoon Hotel, a short film by Kat Mata. The screening was on the second floor of Tattooed Mom's at the very back. I had never been up there before. If I ever do go to TMoms it's usually to feed a vegan or to get disappointed by a pickletini and honestly the decor on the first floor really puts me off. It's very hot topic halloween in there, everything's beetlejuice green and they use those purple UV christmas lights. It's like a very sanitized, corporatized version of a punk bar. Honestly, though, the upstairs looks much much better, it's dive-ier. I still don't think I'd go there just to hang out if I can help it but who knows.
In a more general sense, I'm not much of a film connoisseur, but I do like horror and vampires and I heard this was going to be a lesbian vampire flick so, of course, I was interested. While people were making their way into the room and sitting down, they played compilations of old Monster High doll commercials. Seeing them back to back like that is a total trip. A bunch of them are sped up so they would take up less screentime (cost saver). Kids' toy commercials generally are pretty nauseating but seeing them back to back like that was just a repetitive slew of hyperactivity. I think it's something with a lot of potential for ytp memes a la the nutshack but as a casual, ambient, mood setter for the short film, it didn't really work. They were also having a hard time focusing the projector properly. That's the type of thing that makes me glad it's them and not me, technical setup like that seems like a nightmare.
After a while, a few people involved with the making of the film introduced it. Kat herself also gave some words about it to contextualize it's place in the lesbian vampire canon and then the film began.
The film is short, even by short film standards, only 13 minutes long, so the pacing is pretty fast. All of the characters and their motivations have to be established quickly, so there's a lot of depth and nuance that gets skipped over. The husband in the movie needs to be shown as a bad enough person that he's deserving of death, so it's revealed in quick succession that he is: a wife-beater, sexist, homophobic, and generally violent, abusive, and unreasonable. I don't think the performance given for the husband was very good, but I think considering the demands placed on him for exposition, giving a performance that was convincing and resonant might have been impossible.
The husband is extremely hateable, so his death, to me, actually felt lackluster. Kat addressed after the film that she received a lot of feedback that the kill scene should have been bloodier. I don't necessarily feel the amount of blood is the issue, but I do think the kill scene should have been more gruesome. As it is now, Bonnie lightly slits her husband's throat, he falls into the bathtub, and she stabs him somewhat convincingly over and over. Um, I actually want to see him get beat the fuck up. As I said, the film quickly and extremely establishes the husband as unredeemable. We see him hit Bonnie, we hear him berate and gaslight her, and he establishes that if she doesn't sexually submit to him he's going to assault her. If that's the level of evil he's at, it's not good enough for me that he dies. I want brutality.
After a while, a few people involved with the
The stand out performance was definitely Bonnie, played by Gladia Boldt. I think she brought emotional complexity to the role. There are many beautiful shots in the film. Overall, in the mood and vibe department, the film really succeeds. The sets and costumes look great and the lighting works well. Something interesting that I'll identify as neither positive nor negative is that the film feels unplaceable. The time period isn't clear and the setting itself feels like it exists in its own void without a larger world around it. It feels contextless in a lot of ways.
At its core, the film is a lesbian rescue and revenge fantasy. Stories like this are powerful and they connect with people who have faced adverse experiences, both internally and externally, because of their sexuality. However, there are things about the film that I find troubling that cannot be ignored.
Bonnie is a lily-white, virginal, closeted lesbian. Her new husband is an abusive monster who she is powerless to leave or stand up to. She is timid, submissive, and seemingly unwilling to act. At the hotel, she meets Amadora, a lesbian vampire who is also a woman of color. Amadora stands up to Bonnie's abusive husband. She also puppets Bonnie's body in order to kill said husband, something that Bonnie is conscious of, but was ultimately unwilling to do had it not been for Amadora's control. Afterwards, Amadora turns Bonnie into a vampire, something that Bonnie accepts willingly, but not with any visible enthusiasm or excitement. Even as the two sit in a bathtub, drinking and bathing in the husband's blood, Bonnie seems passive and resigned.
One reference that Kat brought up during the panel that followed the film was The Hunger (1983). That film has a similar set up. Miriam, a vampire, kills Sarah's boyfriend, seduces her, and turns her into a vampire. Afterwards, however, Sarah overpowers Miriam, forces her to confront the fate of her past victims/lovers, and sentences her to their same fate. Sarah then takes control and establishes her own life as a vampire. One can see how different this is. Sarah's desires are awakened and recognized, but she makes choices. She is an active agent in her life and destiny.
I don't like the characterizations in Honeymoon Hotel. I don't like that Bonnie isn't an active agent in her own life, death, and unlife. Being passed around is not empowering and it's not what I'm looking for in a lesbian fantasy. Furthermore, we have Amadora's characterization in comparison to Bonnie's. Amadora is more aggressive than Bonnie and takes control not only of her own life, but of Bonnie's. She is more sexually forward and dominant than Bonnie is. This type of relationship between a woman who has established whiteness and a woman who is racially othered has a long history in lesbian vampire media. It's present all the way back in Camilla, one of the first pieces of vampire fiction. These traits for white women and women of color respectively have been used across genres and are used as justifications for discrimination in our daily lives as well. Racialized dynamics like this existing in lesbian media is something to be interrogated, not perpetuated.
If you're someone who loves vampires, lesbians, or both, I would recommend giving Honeymoon Hotel a shot when it sees wider release. It definitely checks all the boxes for those who love the genre. I would say also that the film shows a lot of promise for Kat as a director. She was a student for most of its production and the film is an achievement. I'm looking forward to seeing whatever's next for her.