It Came From TUBI! "Royal Jelly" (2021)

 Imagine "Pretty In Pink" meets "Hereditary" ... just don't imagine a final product that's all that good

By: Toxicka Shock
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"Royal Jelly" is a movie with a VERY promising premise. What would happen if you fused "Mean Girls" and Cronenberg's "The Fly" into the same movie?

Well, kids, don't get your hopes up. Sadly, the execution here doesn't get anywhere close to even halfway meeting our expectations. And that's a shame, really, because had this movie taken a few turns here and there, it could've turned out MUCH better than the final product.

You know how sometimes, when you watch a disappointing movie, you can't figure out exactly *where* the movie went awry? In the case of "Royal Jelly," it's glaringly apparent when and where the movie goes off the rails - call it the old "bait and switch" ruse, where all of a sudden the vibe and tempo of the movie shifts RADICALLY just when you think it's going to enter into more intriguing (and unconventional) territory.

"Royal Jelly" isn't a good movie. But I don't know if I would call it a truly "bad" movie, either - just a flick that, relly, could've been MUCH better than it turned out with just a few minor tweaks here and there. And to say that's frustrating puts it mildly.

If you were wondering if the name of the movie was meant to be taken hyperliterally, well, the opening credits depict a nerdy goth-type in black lipstick and black nail polish donning a beekeeper's suit and LITERALLY stirring up a batch of honey. So yeah, there's that.

Then we cut to our leading lady (now wearing a daper Queen T-Shirt) giving a lecture in science class about the mating habits of bees. This ... is probably foreshadowing. Of course, this being a movie about cruel high schoolers, apparently somebody spliced a dick pic into the end of her slideshow, so she has to go to the principal's office and have a VERY uncomfortable dinner with her parents afterwards.

As it turns out, her own sister is the one behind the prank. So her dad gives her a heart to heart about how her bitchy sibling is actually jealous of her smarts. So naturally, she intentionally smears period blood all over her bed in the very next scene. 

Even early on in the movie you can see that they're trying to draw some parallells to the "Cinderella" story, and to their credit, it is done about as subtly as they probably could've. Also, apparently the main character's deceased mom was a beekeeper, too, so that's probably an important plot point for later on. Probably.

So there's a substitute teacher in class the next day and the evil sister drops a tampon on a drawing of an elf fairy or something and the teacher tells her to mind her own damn business.

Then the sub basically takes the main character out on a date, complete with Chinese takeout and the egging of all the bitchy girls' houses. And you can tell they're super-bitchy, because they're blonde and do the winged-thing with their eyeliner.

can anybody explain to me *when* movie producers decided that the best way to show how bitchy a character is is by showing her put on lipgloss real slow?

Not that you need me to tell you this, but yes, there does seem to be some sort of sexual tension between the main character and the teacher. The movie doesn't explicitly say how wide the age gap is, but if I had to take a guess? I'd say, I don't know, about 20 or 30 years in prison.

Of course, you knew the bitchy girls would retaliate at some point, so they get back at her by smashing her beehives to oblivion. Then we learn the sub has a teen son of her own, then the sub combs whats-her-name's hair all slow and seductively while synth-pop plays in the background and we're ALL feeling like major league lesbians watching this stuff unfurl.

Hey, what do you know, the sub is also really big into apiaries. What are the odds? Then the sub says she noticed her son making goo-goo eyes at the main character. So the son and our heroine kiss in the next scene while his mama shoots random things off-screen with a rifle. Yeah, this movie took a hard turn, and I can't really say it's for the better. But let's reserve judgment until the whole movie is over, why don't we?

Then the son starts growing these weird lesions on his arm and his mom yells at him a whole bunch and our heroine knows something is up but she just can't put her finger on it quite yet. Then she tells him she thinks his mom is a crazy bitch (no offense) and he takes off his shirt and he has bloody scabs all over neck and abdomen. So of course, our heroine takes her shirt off two and the start making out anyway. But when she wakes up the next morning, all she finds is a big gory splotch on the matress and a trail of blood leading outside the house. Hmmm.

Then this goofy guy in a cowboy hat shows up out of the blue and sings terribly for a bit. OK, so he's the sub's OTHER son. Good for them to wait five or so minutes before divulging that key detail. Then this weird albino-looking kid attacks our heroine and the sub storms in with a shotgun and ... yeah, this movie has completely gone off the deep end.

Then the sub suddenly devlops a thick Southern accent and our heroine calls her a "sick bitch" and she decides she's going to help the albino girl escape from the house (which is now coated in a cold blue light, you know, just 'cause.) Then the sub stabs the albino and ties our lead actress to a chair and ... she starts to give birth to larvae. Then the cowboy starts preparations to RAPE her, only for our heroine to reach into his mouth and yank his tonsils out with her bare hands.

Which means our cat fight grand finale is right around the corner. So fangs sprout out of the sub's mouth (does that mean she's a vampire or something?) and the chase is on. Oh, and there's a whole bunch of fanged women (of all ages, races and body shapes) coming out of the woodworks now, then our heroine pops fangs out of her mouth AND a set of bee wings pop out of her back and they're LITERALLY props you could buy from Party City for like, $20. So our heroine kills the sub and all the other bee women (and one bee old man, for whatever reason) bow down before her and yep, that's the movie, folks.

... I think they *LITERALLY* bought the evil bee costume with $5 worth of products from Spirit Halloween.

Yeah, I think we can ALL determine where this film went downhill. Just when it seems like we're gonna' get some substitute teacher-on-high-school-outcast seduction (if not in the sexual sense, certainly in the utilitarian sense for convenient plot purposes), the tone sadly regresses into a hyper-predictable and hyper-boring "random girl held captive by a creepy person she didn't think was that creepy" yarn.

The film was written and directed by Sean Riley, whose only other feature film credit is 2017's "Fighting Belle" - which is a movie I'm guessing 99.9 percent of us have never heard of before, let alone watched.

Nor is there much to be said of the cast. The actress who played Tremaine is Fiona McQuinn, who has a couple of Z-grade horror movies on her resume but nothing the hoi polli has likely viewed. Meanwhile, the actress who played Tresa, Sherry Lattanzi, did make a brief appearance in the TV show "House of Horrors," so she MIGHT be recognizable to some of you cable TV junkies out there.

"Royal Jelly" definitely had potential. Unfortunately, the movie abandons its initially appealing and alluring approach midway, and the end result is a dissapointingly predictable straight-to-streaming shlocker with virtually no staying power.

Still, the folx who made this one do seem to have some talent. A little more time marinating and a couple of key edits here and there and this thing really could've been a teenxploitation horror comedy mini-classic on par with "Ginger Snaps."

Sadly, this cinematic hive is no horror honey comb - despite *almost* getting the structure oh-so right.

XOXO, TOXICKA