Hon­ey­trap

Draw­ing on 20 years of expe­ri­ence liv­ing in south Lon­don, writer/​director Rebec­ca Johnson’s debut fea­ture is a bit­ter­sweet Brix­ton-set dra­ma ​“based on true events”, mak­ing its sub­ject mat­ter by turns top­i­cal and troubling.

The sto­ry cen­tres around a 15-year-old Trinida­di­an-British girl named Lay­la (Jes­si­ca Sula) who, like so many young women her age, dreams of achiev­ing fame and for­tune just like her idol, Bey­on­cé. An impres­sion­able, under­priv­i­leged but oth­er­wise ordi­nary teenag­er, Layla’s route to star­dom begins in haste when she’s cast in a music video (despite not real­ly know­ing how to dance) for local rap­per Troy (Lucien Lavis­count, him­self a record­ing artist), who’s also a chief mem­ber of a noto­ri­ous gang known as The 28s.

This is no straight­for­ward rags-to-rich­es sto­ry. After ini­tial­ly being seduced by Troy, Lay­la soon realis­es that his inten­tions may not be as hon­ourable as they first seemed, a feel­ing echoed by her clos­est friend and fig­u­ra­tive guardian angel, Shaun (Nton­ga Mwan­za). Less pre­oc­cu­pied with Layla’s well­be­ing is moth­er Shiree (Nao­mi Ryan), who repeat­ed­ly makes it clear to her that she’s noth­ing but a nuisance.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, this is a film about the cor­rup­tion of inno­cence. More specif­i­cal­ly, it is a vital cau­tion­ary tale that speaks direct­ly to today’s youth while address­ing the sys­tem­at­ic fail­ure of the sup­port net­works designed to pro­tect them. As Lay­la becomes more deeply ingra­ti­at­ed with Troy’s gang, she finds her­self com­plic­it in increas­ing­ly unsavoury activ­i­ty, much of which is direct­ed at Shaun.

You may well be able to guess which direc­tion the film is head­ed, but the tru­ly dev­as­tat­ing thing about its con­clu­sion is that it feels like the kind of every­day occur­rence that would (and should) pro­voke pub­lic out­cry were it more rou­tine­ly reported.