Film

Honey Boy

Name: Honey Boy
Genre: Drama
Released: 2019
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Lucas Hedges, Noah Jupe, Byron Bowers, Laura San Giacomo

Biopic

A raw, semi-autobiographical portrait of a child actor and his volatile father across a decade, told in interwoven timelines. It's intimate and unflinching about trauma, addiction, and the cost of early fame. For anyone who wants cinema that feels confessional rather than polished.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to fractured, memory-driven portraits of father-son damage, where tenderness and resentment sit in the same scene and the film trusts you to hold both.

Skip it if you want a conventional showbiz story with a clear arc; this is a loose, fragmented sequence of memories that circles its wounds and rarely lets the mood lift.

What it asks of you: Ninety-four minutes of jagged jumps between two timelines, paced slowly and dark; it rewards stillness more than it rewards waiting for a plot to arrive.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Florida Project2017

Captures childhood wonder amid economic desperation with the same eye for unguarded moments and emotional truth. Another film about survival and makeshift families that refuses sentimentality.

But Slower than expected, with long sequences of kids just being kids. The poverty is relentless and never resolves neatly.

Manchester by the Sea2016

Grief and masculine silence, explored through fractured timelines that mirror Honey Boy's structure. Casey Affleck gives the kind of performance that feels excavated from somewhere true.

But Intensely downbeat. The tragedy at its center never softens, and the film offers no catharsis, only endurance.

Moonlight2016

Three chapters of a life, three actors playing the same person at different ages, building toward a moment of reckoning. The emotional architecture is similar—how we become who we are.

But Dreamlike and elliptical. Plot isn't the point; accumulation of feeling is, which some find emotionally distant rather than intimate.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Honey Boy

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Cameraperson2016

Both films interrogate the relationship between watching and being watched. Honey Boy is confessional cinema made by someone who was observed his entire life; Cameraperson asks what we owe the people we film.

A documentary essay made from footage shot over two decades by cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. It's about witnessing suffering and carrying it—a meditation on what it means to observe trauma rather than live it.

But Not a narrative. It's collage, aphorism, and reflection. Some will find it self-indulgent; others will think it's the most honest thing they've seen about the weight of being present.

The Wrestler2008

Mickey Rourke as a man trying to rebuild after destroying everything. It's about failure and the hunger to matter, shot with documentary-like plainness that makes the desperation real.

But Repetitive and deliberately unglamorous. The wrestling scenes are ungainly; the daily struggle of survival is the actual story.

Krisha2016

Sergei Loznitsa's film about homelessness and family obligation, made with non-actors, has the same documentary-adjacent texture. It's about care and collapse without easy sentiment.

But Shot in long takes, slow, and heavy. Not much happens in the conventional sense. The film trusts you to read silences.

A Ghost Story2017

Explores time, loss, and the impossible weight of the past through a formally inventive but emotionally devastating lens. Unconventional yet undeniably affecting.

But Aggressively slow and strange. The central conceit could feel gimmicky rather than profound depending on your tolerance for experimental storytelling.

Minari2021

A family dream that cracks under pressure, shot with warmth but unflinching about disappointment and inherited expectations. The child's perspective anchors it, as it does in Honey Boy.

But The patriarch isn't sympathetic, and the film won't resolve the tension between love and resentment. Some find it frustratingly unresolved.

Climax2018

Gaspar Noé's portrait of joy curdling into nightmare among dancers. Visually hypnotic and darkly funny, with an unsettling intimacy about bodies and ruin.

But Abrasive, sexually explicit, and punishing. The second half is disturbing in ways designed to alienate rather than move some viewers.

Waves2019

Two-part family drama centered on a charismatic father whose toxicity radiates outward. Formally bold and emotionally messy in ways that feel honest.

But The tonal shifts are jarring; the visual ambition occasionally overshadows the human story, and the ending divides audiences.

Nocturama2016

Like Honey Boy, it's fascinated by people performing versions of themselves and the gap between who they show and who they are. Both films trust the viewer to sit with moral ambiguity.

Romain Gavras's portrait of young people planning a terrorist attack, but the film is less about ideology than about the strange intimacy and performance of being part of a group. Formally inventive and morally unsettling.

But It's about radicalization in ways that won't feel safe. Aestheticizes nihilism. The second half happens almost entirely in a shopping mall at night, which sounds absurd because it is.