Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 review.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 attempts to rectify the past and find momentum for the future. It, surprisingly, more or less succeeds at both.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2
Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Screenplay by Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Matt Leslie
Starring Scott Chambers, Ryan Oliva, Tallulah Evans, Simon Callow, Eddy MacKenzie, Lewis Santer and Alec Newman
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 Review
There’s an odd thing you may have noticed about the newly dubbed Poohniverse…depending on what side of the line you stand on. For most… Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was an abomination. The death of art and original thought all rolled into a cheap rip-off. If you are on the other side of that (mostly rhetorical) argument…you’ve probably spent more than a few moments snickering at the idea of a slasher movie involving an anthropomorphic bear wielding such power. The movie (and its new sequel Blood and Honey 2) is both dismissed out of hand and held to an impossible standard. The root of the problem stems from a simple question. How good is a Winnie-the-Pooh slasher movie supposed to be?
It will never be good enough to change anyone’s mind about its existence. No matter how bad it is…it doesn’t actually have the ability to ruin childhoods or destroy the artform. Most importantly, “fine” isn’t going to cut it either way. Which is bad news for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2. A movie that improves on the original in every way…topping out at perfectly fine. The loud naysaying you will hear will come from people who have no intention of ever watching these movies…or, of course, the people who say that about a lot of similar genre movies. Even ones not taken from stories in the public domain.
Poohniverse creator Rhys Frake-Waterfield knows all this. He wisely chooses to leave the people who decided this was trash the moment the first movie was announced in the rear-view mirror…focusing instead of providing something more interesting and sustainable for the people who bought tickets. He (and co-writer for the sequel Matt Leslie) willingly acknowledge the failings of that first film. It’s turned into a bit of an in-universe joke in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2. A cheaply made account of the story of the real Christopher Robin.
The gambit would fail out of the gate if Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 didn’t feature much superior production values. The costumes are far better than they were last time around. There is a better use of practical gore effects too…even if the movie still struggles to deliver epic kill shot. Post-kill effects are combined with a heavy volume of deaths to offset what can’t quite be delivered. It gives Blood and Honey 2 a momentum that the original never had.
With the first movie relegated to a fictional account… Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 uses the opportunity to rewrite its lore. The story presents a mystery to solve…and ties it into the background of our Hundred Acre Wood pals. Christopher Robin’s backstory doesn’t just involve a questionable friendship with a murderous bear. He had a brother who, along with several other children, was abducted from a birthday party. Christopher is working with a therapist to uncover lost memories. It sends him down a path to find the man who abducted them. Then he learns the truth about the Hundred Acre Wood creatures.
It’s probably obvious what that truth is. However you feel about Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2’s new lore…it solves one of the biggest issues plaguing the original. The first movie never used its borrowed property in any way that made it feel necessary to have burrowed it in the first place. The original Blood and Honey might as well have been about unnamed anthropomorphic animals in the woods. The sequel uses the property to build a new world to play in.
That world is dominated by Pooh and his friends. Unlike the original, this is a talkative crew. Outside of one final line…the creatures were mute in Blood and Honey. This time around, Owl and Tigger have joined the party. Owl is the breakout star of the show. He has the best creature design and swoops around the screen waiting to attack. Tigger and Pooh do most of the damage…but Owl is the more interesting antagonist.
Scott Chambers leads the human characters as Christopher Robin. He’s doing the lord’s work reacting to a series of things that are, inherently, silly. A lack of humor about itself still plagues the sequel the way it did the original. A story like this doesn’t need to be taken so seriously. Unfortunately, it’s a choice that appears set to continue as the Poohniverse continues.
In the end, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is superior to its predecessor in every way. It offers signs that the series wants to reward the people who choose to invest in it. Most people never will. Since we live in a world where public domain horror is so quickly dismissed (without a hint of understanding that every Dracula, Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes story is, itself, public domain) it’s fair to ask a different question than the ones we started off with. Shouldn’t self-improvement and acknowledgment of failure earn the project a bit of respect? It’s sure to be appreciated by the people on one side of that line. The people who these movies are being made for.
Scare Value
It’s not Shakespeare. That will be enough for most people to dismiss the Poohniverse altogether. Those that recognize a slasher movie about Winnie-the-Pooh shouldn’t be Shakespeare may find enough to like about Blood and Honey 2 to return for future installments. If they returned to the property following the first one…they may even find that their faith has been rewarded.
2.5/5
Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 Link
In theaters now – Fandango
