Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey
Director: Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Cast: Nikolai Leon, Maria Taylor, Craig David Dowsett, and Chris Cordell
Based on: Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
Released: 10 March 2023 (UK)
Run time: 84 mins (1h, 24m)
Age rating: 18 / R
My rating: Oh, bother.
The days of adventures and merriment have come to an end, as Christopher Robin - now a young man - has left Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet to fend for themselves. As time passes, feeling angry and abandoned, the two become feral. After getting a taste of blood, Pooh and Piglet set off to find a new source of food. It’s not long before their bloody rampage begins…
Well. This was indeed a set of pictures in motion with sound. Was it good? Of course not, it’s a slasher movie based on a beloved children’s character that just went into the US public domain (but is also still protected under UK copyright law, which is where the movie was made).
The biggest problem with this movie, I feel, is that it takes itself too seriously. I’m usually a fan of movies with ridiculous premises that are taken seriously because they can work, but this movie is so stark and bleak that it’s not even a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ experience. It’s just bad. The premise of the film is that Pooh Bear and his friends were real creatures - not imaginary friends based on Christopher Robin’s toys - who turned monstrous after he left for university. They all kill Eeyore and eat him before taking a vow of silence and killing any humans who wander into the 100 Acre Wood. And then that’s not expanded on at all. We could have seen what happened in the five years since Christopher left, but nope, we just get this weird Seven-style edit over the opening credits of news reports talking about people going missing, and then we meet an entirely new cast of characters who get caught up in Pooh and Piglet’s rampage. Also, the only other book characters who are mentioned are Rabbit and Owl but we don’t see them while Tigger, Kanga, and Roo don’t get mentioned at all because they’re still protected under copyright.
I could barely say that the movie is about Pooh and Piglet taking revenge on Christopher Robin because he barely appears in the movie. He’s at the beginning, the end, and a little bit in the middle but the movie isn’t even about him, it’s about a group of young women who have gone into the woods for a weekend away so that their friend can deal with the trauma of having a stalker. Only she ends up with two more stalkers who kill all of her friends. Pooh and Piglet could have been replaced by two random guys in masks and the story would have been roughly the same, they didn’t need to be those characters specifically.
I’m usually quite forgiving when it comes to performances in movies like this because actors can only do their best with bad material. But I can’t do it with this one. The acting in this movie is akin to soap opera acting and I don’t mean soap operas like Dallas or Dynasty or telenovelas, I mean British soaps like Eastenders and Coronation Street. The performances are so bland that when it comes time for characters to be scared or killed, they just end up coming across as pathetic. The worst case of this is when Christopher Robin is begging Piglet to not kill his girlfriend. He sounds like a child asking to not be grounded, not someone watching a loved one be butchered in front of him.
While the cast doesn’t give good performances, the characters that they play aren’t that better. They all feel like empty shells that only exist to be killed off. There’s no character development, they don’t add much to the plot and they’re just boring. To me, the only character that was made to stand out was Lara, who seems to only exist to be the movie’s sex appeal. She gets two full scenes dedicated to just being in a bikini, is wearing the least amount of clothes when she gets killed and gets the most brutal kill out of all the characters. Not even the movie’s main character got this much attention in and outside of it.
I wish I could say that the effects are this movie’s saving grace, but they’re not. I’m not the kind of person to complain about how movies are lit these days because I’m not an expert in cinematography and I likely never will be, but this movie is so dark that it makes it hard to see at times. The movie does get brutal with its kills at times, but it’s not the goriest movie I’ve ever seen (it may be the goriest movie someone else has seen, though). Most of the effects are practical, especially when it comes to blood or makeup, but on the occasions when CGI is used, it’s glaringly obvious.
The kills themselves aren’t terrible but they’re not the most imaginative I’ve seen. People getting their heads turned to a pulp is a classic for a reason, but they just fall flat here since the actors don’t seem terribly enthused about their performances. The thing that also turned me off from them comes back to the premise: it’s Pooh Bear and Piglet killing people. Worst of all, to avoid any trouble from Disney, the characters barely look like who they’re supposed to be. I don’t buy that Pooh is a man-sized bear thing, he just looks like Homer Simpson with teddy ears, and Piglet is just a man with a boar’s head. It feels like they were just placeholder names before the writer came up with real names for them, but no, that’s who they’re supposed to be.
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this movie unless you plan to watch it with a group of friends who know what they’re getting into and want to rip it to shreds while watching. I watched it alone and was just bored the whole time through but thankfully it’s only 84 minutes. After watching, I can see why Jim Cummings (the official voice of Disney’s Pooh and Tigger) was so upset about the movie even existing, but I’m more just disappointed that it was so bad.
The end credits try to pull a Marvel by stating ‘Winnie-the-Pooh will return’ and a sequel is already in pre-production, but I don’t think it’s needed at all. Especially since the director still has to wait for the rest of the characters to enter the US public domain. I’d rather stick with the regular silly old bear who would likely have had the same reaction as me.
