WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY (2023)

Studio:     ITN Distribution
Director:    Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Writer:     Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Producer:  Rhys Frake-Waterfield, Scott Jeffrey
Stars:     Nikolai Leon, Maria Taylor, Craig David Dowsett, Chris Cordell, Natasha Rose Mills, Amber Doig-Thorne, Danielle Ronald

Review Score:

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Summary:

Having turned feral after being abandoned by Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet embark on a bloody killing spree.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After their longtime human friend Christopher Robin grew up and left them to attend college, anthropomorphic animals Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, and Owl were forced to fend for themselves in the Hundred Acre Wood. When they reached the brink of starvation, Winnie convinced the others to eat Eeyore for food. The resulting trauma caused the animals to turn feral and develop a hatred for humans, especially Christopher Robin for abandoning them. Renouncing their humanity, they returned to their animalistic roots and swore to never talk again.

Five years later, Christopher Robin brings his fiancée Mary to the forest to meet his former animal friends, whom Mary believes are imaginary. To the couple’s shock, Piglet suddenly strangles Mary to death with a chain. Pooh and Piglet then attack Christopher Robin so they can tie him up for torture.

On the advice of her therapist, a woman named Maria rents a retreat in the forest near Hundred Acre Wood to recover from trauma inflicted by a stalker. Maria’s girlfriends Jessica, Alice, Zoe, and Lara join her. Pooh kills a fifth friend, Tina, when she becomes lost on her way to meet the others.

Pooh and Piglet capture Lara while she takes selfies in an outdoor hot tub. Pooh runs over Lara’s head with a car.

From Lara’s dead body as well as a warning written in blood, the other four women realize they are being terrorized. While Maria and Jessica hide, Piglet bashes Zoe’s head with a sledgehammer. Piglet and Pooh capture Alice to take back to their lair.

Maria and Jessica eventually find and rescue Alice. They also rescue Christopher Robin before finding Charlene, a woman Maria previously bumped into at a gas station, held captive as another prisoner of Pooh and Piglet. Angry about being disfigured from mutilation, Charlene tries confronting Piglet at gunpoint, but Pooh kills her.

Pooh pursues Maria and Jessica into the woods while Alice uses the sledgehammer to beat Piglet to death. Piglet’s squeal brings Pooh back. Pooh subsequently stabs Alice through her mouth with a large knife.

Maria and Jessica flag down four local men in a passing truck for help. Pooh returns. The four men attack Pooh with blunt weapons, but Pooh still slaughters all four of them.

Maria and Jessica try using the truck to run over Pooh, but Pooh instead climbs aboard the back. After the truck crashes, Pooh pulls out Jessica and decapitates her. Pooh prepares to kill Maria too, but Christopher Robin unexpectedly arrives in another truck that he uses to pin Pooh against the other vehicle.

Pooh gets free just before the trucks explode. Despite Christopher Robin’s pleas to take him instead, Pooh slashes Maria’s throat. While Pooh stoops down to repeatedly stab Maria’s head, Christopher Robin flees into the forest.

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Review:

It goes without saying that no one should ever take pleasure in an unsuspecting person being undeservedly duped.  Despite saying that anyway, for longtime horror fans who now know better after being repeatedly hoodwinked by shameless producers peddling poor knockoffs or piggybacking off of popular properties, it’s still a little funny to see mainstream media sources and everyday moviegoers get scammed into thinking “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” might be something inventively special, only to discover it’s just another bad B-movie to toss into the DTV dumpster.

By now, more people are aware that author A.A. Milne’s initial Hundred Acre Wood creations fell into the public domain in 2022.  Disney’s imagery can’t be copied since The House of Mouse still owns their specific visions of those characters.  But like Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, or any other work whose original copyright has expired, anyone and their brother can do pretty much whatever they want with Winnie-the-Pooh and his pals.

Before this became more common knowledge, some people heard the enticing hook of “Winnie-the-Pooh horror movie” and got the wrong impression.  These were regular people who know nothing of indie horror’s microbudget world, where first-time filmmakers round up friends for a weekend in a white-walled home to shoot cheap digital footage they call a “film.”  So when notable news outlets widely reported on the wild idea of Winnie-the-Pooh and company becoming bloodthirsty maniacs, they probably pictured an “official” production that would be professional quality given the notoriety of its namesake.

To be crystal clear, I don’t mean to insult those people at all.  Honestly, lucky them for not having to live with the knowledge of what happened to the once-theatrical Amityville “franchise.”  Once again though, I can’t help but snicker a bit when I picture eager grins turning into confused scowls when they saw “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’s” bargain basement production value and wondered, “Wait, what the hell is this?”  Folks, I feel for you.  Those of us who regularly wade in such waters have dealt with opportunists ruining the reputation of indie horror for decades.

Also to be crystal clear, I don’t begrudge writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield at all for “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’s” shenanigans.  On the contrary, I admire, even envy him for latching onto a remarkable scheme before anyone else did, letting word of that concept snowball into free marketing, then getting audiences to take the bait through a misleading theatrical push the movie didn’t deserve.  Getting noticed in the low-budget business is 95% of the battle, and getting noticed is exactly what “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” did.  Now the film has to deal with the fallout from everyone who was fooled, feels frustrated, or wants to take up pitchforks and torches to treat it like Frankenstein’s Monster.

Easily the best thing, perhaps the only good thing, in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” is its two-minute prologue.  In it, pencil sketch animation summarizes an amusing backstory of how and why Pooh and friends went from friendly to feral.  It also conveniently explains why Eeyore isn’t among the group anymore as well as why they no longer talk, even though the likelier explanations are that a live-action Eeyore would be too challenging to create and the cheap latex masks worn by the Pooh and Piglet actors don’t allow their mouths to move.

You read that right.  “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” only features Pooh and Piglet, and only as two men wearing Halloween masks that are, hilariously or insultingly – I’m not sure which, supposed to pass for actual animal faces.  As the shockingly dull movie dragged on, I half-expected to find out Pooh and Piglet really were mere men in masks all along, and Christopher Robin was actually driven insane by a secret society of serial killers who convinced him as a kid that they were magical creatures.  Instead, the film simply sends these two burly dudes to terrorize a group of women at a cabin in the woods, basically taking a bright idea for turning a beloved children’s icon into a fearsome freak, then only using it for the exact same scenario that 90% of all other slashers already have.

The main woman who meets Pooh’s knife and Piglet’s sledgehammer has one laughable background bit about being traumatized by a stalker, which is only marginally more descriptive development than “Buxom Blonde Obsessed with Taking Selfies” gets.  The other three indistinguishable warm bodies are Brunette, Other Brunette, and Brunette with Glasses.  Christopher Robin plays a criminally minimal role, presumably so “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” can instead spend a majority of its minutes drawing out snoozy scenes of tiptoeing, hiding, and letting in every rando who wants to come in from left field to be killed with little context.

That’s legitimately all there is to this 80-minute lump of a lark that could have been fun if it didn’t come up with a kooky premise and immediately cut off all creativity right there.  That premise is the lone novelty.  Everything else is derivative drivel that looks shabby to boot.  I’d say nice try for the concept alone, except “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” never truly tries at all.  I’d also send sympathy to those who innocently expected something better than what they got.  Now that they’re wiser from having been burned, I’ll instead welcome them to the bottomless sewer of lo-fi indie fright flicks.  Don’t feel bad.  Winnie-the-Pooh apparently dwells down here now too.

Review Score: 20

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