 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Royal Jelly • Year: 2021 • Country: USA • Director: Sean Riley • Main cast: Elizabeth McCoy, Sherry Lattanzi, Lucas T. Matchett, Jake McCoy • Runtime: 94 minutes • Production company: Integral Motion Pictures • TRAILER
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Royal Jelly (2021) is a movie that although at first can seem a little confusing, towards the end one can realize the filmmakers wanted to step into the terrains of body horror, that style that David Cronenberg mastered and made his own.
It starts like many other movies with outcast teenage protagonists do: with the popular kids in school bullying on that girl who is different from the rest (and either has a good collection of the same Queen rock band t-shirt or she has a serious rejection to doing laundry). And, as her late mother did, her biggest hobby is taking care of her hives of bees, almost considering them her babies. Until the bullies destroy the hives.
Here is when the story loses its north. Our outcast protagonist decides to leave her family and move in with her teacher. A teacher she just met. A teacher that since the very first moment seemed to hide some dark intentions, as dark as the sunglasses she always wears, even in class.
Royal Jelly (2021) comes from a potent idea, with a start point that many youngsters in the world could get related to in these times where the social alienation of the younger generations is a real fact. Being a teenager has never been easy. It is not easy now, it wasn’t easy 50 years ago, and it won’t be easy in 50 years if we are still around and didn’t fuck up the planet yet. And that is always an easy and effective path in order to build a horror story. But, sadly, the main idea didn’t reflect in the screenplay, and both the screenplay and the film storytelling are very chaotic. The actions happening in the movie are not very plausible, and the narrative gets stuck when the climax is growing. Then, all of a sudden, the ecstasy of the film, the big shocking moment, I assume diluted due to limited budgetary reasons, but that leaves the viewer cold, very cold. Expectations are never fulfilled and the promising of the main idea becomes a drifting experience.
Not everything is bad in Royal Jelly (2021), it has some good moments, especially in the first sequences when the characters are being introduced. But as soon the dark side of the film takes over, it all loses sense. But, still, although not reaching expectations, it is a not so painful watch as some other films of this kind deliver.
RATE: 4/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt10220406
