Honor Society – Film Review

Honor (Angourie Rice) is an ambitious high school senior whose sole focus is getting into an Ivy League college… assuming she can first score the coveted recommendation from her guidance counselor, Mr. Calvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Willing to do whatever it takes, Honor concocts a Machiavellian-like plan to take down her top three student competitors, until things take a turn when she unexpectedly falls for her biggest competition, Michael (Gaten Matarazzo).

By taking a quick look at all of the promotional material for Oran Zegman‘s Honor Society, one would be forgiven for thinking it’s a cute and sweet coming-of-age high-school comedy with little else to offer. In all reality, it is all that but it also comes packed with some surprisingly dark and highly emotional material that took me completely off-guard.

It sort of has the same feel-good vibes of Love, Simon and the dark themes of The Perks of Being a Wallflower rolled into one. Simply put, it’s one of my personal favorite movies of the year so far. It’s a wonderfully directed film with a razor-sharp script from David A. Goodman who seriously knows how to subvert audience predictions.

Sometimes, as an avid film watcher, it can be quite easy to sit back and watch a film, being able to predict all of the storyline outcomes long before they happen. When watching Honor Society, I was convinced that I knew what was going to happen, only for the film to pull the carpet right underneath me in the most satisfying and crazy way.

A large part as to why this film works as well as it does is thanks to Angourie Rice’s performance as the titular Honor. In just one scene, you already know exactly what kind of person she is. She’s the definition of an over-achiever, and she will do whatever it takes to fit in and make connections in the school, so long as it helps her get where she wants to be. Who cares if screws anyone else over?

She is genuinely kind of unlikable for a lot of the movie, but she ultimately is the Tree Gelbman from Happy Death Day sort of character. At first, she comes across as a bit of a jerk, but by the time the movie comes to a close, you see just how much character growth she went through, and now you love her. Tree and Honor are quite similar in that regard.

Rice’s performance is seriously electric, and is worthy of an Oscar in my humble opinion. She also has wonderful chemistry with Gaten Matarazzo, who also delivers one of his strongest performances to date. I was also a bit worried that I’d watch the film and have a hard time watching him not play his Stranger Things character Dustin, but thankfully, that was not the case.

There are some moments in which this film fails to find its footing – the first act is a bit slow, and there’s a small portion of the film where the direction feels completely lost, but after that, the film is a non-stop ride of emotions, thrills, humor, and heart all wrapped into one amazing movie.

Honor Society is a heartfelt, hilarious, and surprisingly dark coming-of-age comedy boasting terrific performances from Angourie Rice and Gaten Matarazzo.