Royal Jelly (2021) poster

Royal Jelly (2021)

Rating:


USA. 2021.

Crew

Director/Screenplay – Sean Riley, Producer – Candy Riley, Photography/Visual Effects – Jonathan Hammond, Music – Joe Hodgin. Production Company – Royal Jelly Movie LLC/Hrillina LLC.

Cast

Elizabeth McCoy (Astor), Sherry Lattanzi (Tresa), Lucas T. Matchett (Henry), Raylen Ladner (Drew), Jake McCoy (David), Jonas Chartock (Jody), Fiona McQuinn (Tremain), Nicole Prunty (Ana), Jesse Hartsog (Colton), Hrilina Rakhs (Stasia), Justin Davis (Mr Buden)


Plot

Nerdy teenager Astor loves bees. At school, she is tormented by her stepsister Drew and Drew’s clique of friends. Back home, her father fails to offer much support as Drew continues to pick on her. After the teacher dies, they receive a new substitute teacher in Tresa. Tresa stands up on Astor’s side against Drew’s torments. Tresa and Astor quickly become best friends and Tresa takes Astor to egg the house of one of the girls in the clique. The girls of the clique respond by trashing Astor’s beloved beehives. Tresa takes a distraught Astor away to stay at her place where she decides to create some new hives. However, as Astor is drawn into Tresa’s lifestyle, she makes disturbing discoveries.


Royal Jelly was the second film from Sean Riley, a director/writer based in Mississippi. Riley previously made the feature-length Fighting Belle (2017) about a woman boxer. In his day job, Riley works as a public school teacher.

Royal Jelly is a film that makes you do a double-take when you read the premise – “A high school social outcast is taken under the wing of a mysterious mentor, only to be groomed as the hive’s next queen.” Your immediate comparison is to the entertainingly absurd Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), or perhaps even more so The Outer Limits episode ZZZZZ (1964) that featured Joanna Frank as a queen bee in human form looking for a mate. It is an idea that you suspect can go either way – of being a film that is sublimely silly or just too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, Sean Riley takes the premise far more seriously than I would have anticipated at the outset. There is quite a lengthy preamble where we are introduced to nerdy Elizabeth McCoy and sympathise with the way she is bullied by stepsister Raylen Ladner. Then comes the introduction of Sherry Lattanzi as the substitute teacher who sweeps Elizabeth up in her rule-defying wake and encourages her to be her true self.

All of this is a passable set-up. However, about the point where Elizabeth McCoy starts having conversations with Lucas T. Matchett and Sean Riley pitches this as a standard romantic scene, along with a pop song on the soundtrack, you start wondering what is going on. For a film with such a bizarre concept, this seems to be taking things way too seriously.

Teacher Tresa (Sherry Lattanzi) tends Astor (Elizabeth McCoy) in Royal Jelly (2021)
(l to r) Teacher Tresa (Sherry Lattanzi) tends bullied teenager Astor (Elizabeth McCoy)

Around this point, you start to ponder some of the plausibility stretches that the film asks of us. Like how we get a standard makeover scene where Elizabeth McCoy starts to discover her self-worth where having her hair brushed seems to instantly transform her from shy to seductress. It also manages to magically correct her eyesight so that she can throw her glasses away for the rest of the film. Or simply the idea that a teenage girl would willingly go to bed with a guy who has open sores over a large part of his body rather than going “ewww yuck, I don’t want to touch that.”

It is in the latter sections that Royal Jelly loses direction. In far too clichéd a way, Elizabeth McCoy sees beneath the awakening she has received from Sherry Lattanzi. This becomes something sinister and Lattanzi a villain. The climax of the film has Elizabeth emerging as the new queen of the hive, rather absurdly appearing with what look like a set of fairy wings from a high school pantomime on her back.

The sad thing is that Royal Jelly had at its fingertips the potential to do something really interesting. The second scene of the film has Elizabeth McCoy making a school presentation where she describes in detail the hierarchy and structure of a bee’s nest – the drones, the workers and the queen. Some of the things mentioned here – the men being used to impregnate the queen and then having their genitals bitten off, the differentiation of the other classes in terms of the jobs they are assigned – would have made something fascinating if we had seen this translated into human terms. Instead, what we get are clichés about Elizabeth being attracted to a guy and then trying to protect him, or of seeing all the others coming to bow down in obeisance to her. A much more imaginative film would have shown an entire social microcosm based around the idea of a hive hierarchy.


Trailer here


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