Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey Review

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey review.

The reason that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey exists isn’t exactly an artistic one. The characters entered the public domain last year and now everyone is allowed to use them however they see fit. It’s a cash grab with someone else’s creation. We’re bound to see more of these as time does what time does…so we might as well break down what we are in for.

New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey

Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Screenplay by Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Starring Nikolai Leon, Craig David Dowsett, Chris Cordell and Maria Taylor

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey Review

It could have been worse.  That was my first thought while walking out of my screening of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.  That’s probably the wrong way to look at a movie, of course.  Why not “it should have been better”?  In the case of this public domain allowed low budget cash in…there’s good reason it’s not.  A movie born from an uncreative place sets itself a low bar.  Apologies to Star Wars for the stray it’s about to catch…but it’s what happened to The Rise of Skywalker.

Skywalker exists because it had to.  It was a trilogy, after all.  It’s poor because it comes from a place of anti-creativity.  Suits in a room desperate to appease the loudest parts of a fanbase divided by the previous film.  Created without passion, nurtured without love.  Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey doesn’t have to exist.  With the rights to the characters now free for all, however…it was an inevitability.  That doesn’t mean it has to be a poor film.  That’s the one accomplishment that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey can claim as its own.

After Christopher Robin leaves his friends in The Hundred Acre Wood behind to attend college…Pooh and company begin to starve.  They turn their hunger towards Eeyore and give in to their animalistic nature.  When Robin and his wife return to the place of his fond childhood adventures…they find a very different world than the one he remembers.

That synopsis will get you through the opening scene of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.  It becomes a completely different movie after that.  Committing the greatest sin that an adaptation of other material can make.  There’s no real reason for this to be a movie about Winnie-the-Pooh.  A rote, mostly predictable slasher movie awaits those who enter these woods.

The question I pondered through most of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’s thankfully short run time was why it didn’t have anything to say about the characters it is jumping to exploit.  Actually, the question was what happened to Rabbit and Owl.  The opening narration tells us that Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit and Owl survive by eating Eeyore.  We see Eeyore’s grave…but we never see Rabbit and Owl. 

The first question is obviously the more important one.  Without a commentary on, or interesting use of, Milne’s characters…it is readily apparent that the fear you’d have in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is real.  It only exists because it can.  They could have made the same movie with original characters.  That would, however, require original thought.  The rest of the movie makes clear that was never an option.

We are introduced to a group of women arriving for a weekend getaway near The Hundred Acre Wood.  Never mind that the opening credits make clear that there have been several disappearances near the woods.  These underdeveloped characters are incapable of making a smart enough choice to avoid it if they even knew.  The characters are completely unmemorable.  They have depth like “likes social media” and “has a past trauma completely unrelated to this story”. 

I’m not against characters as fodder as a rule…but this becomes problematic for a couple of reasons.  First…the characters are maybe the dumbest in horror history.  I understand the ground that covers.  These characters are dumber.  They miss no chance to stand around when they should run.  They can’t keep their mouths shut for a second as they’re trying to remain hidden.  You’ll rarely see such consistently stupid behavior.  The second reason is that the movie randomly inserts other characters with no backstory or purpose other than to get killed…twice.  Five brand new people just show up to get slaughtered.  If this is the undeveloped fodder…what were these main characters?

As underdeveloped as the characters are…boy are they overwritten.  Seemingly every frame of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is filled with chatter.  No one has anything interesting to say, mind you…but no one shuts up.  I started to feel bad for the actors as they had to comment on every single moment happening in real time.  It’s obviously bad dialog…but what is surprising is how there is no attempt at humor.  You’re being stalked and killed by giant bear/human and pig/human hybrids…and not once does a slightly witty observation slip out?  No gallows humor?  Not one joke?

An overly dramatic and over-bearing score accompanies the incessant chatter.  The movie actually looks pretty good if you can get past the Pooh and Piglet costumes.  They’d have been better explained as giant animatronics that had become sentient than hybrid monsters.  Kills are as fun as the budget will allow.  Sometimes they’re pretty good…sometimes the damage happens off screen.  The intent behind the mayhem is, at least, the purest thing about Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.

That’s a lot of negatives…so let’s go back to the original point.  It could have been worse.  The movie may be ridiculous while played far too seriously…loud when it should be quiet and over scripted while under developed…but it gets kind of fun in spite of itself.  It’s unintentionally fun until it almost becomes intentionally fun.  An effort is made to go big in the third act. Compared to the first two acts, it kind of works?  I can’t sit here and tell you it becomes a good movie…but I can’t deny that I had fun with the climax.

Is it enough to recommend a watch?  Probably.  Just know that you’re going to see a bad movie.  A bad movie that doesn’t want to laugh at itself or comment on its famous characters.  Bad movies come in many forms.  Student Body and Where the Scary Things Are were bad movies that bordered on being unwatchable.  Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a bad movie that is watchable for a lot of the wrong reasons.  Some call it “so bad that it’s good”.  I won’t go that far.  It’s still bad.  It’s just the kind of good kind of bad. 

Scare Value

The most interesting aspect of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is comparing what is borrowed from what is new. The movie only has recognition because of something A.A. Milne created in 1926. It burrows on a legacy largely built by Disney even though the movie can’t use the specific traits of the Disney versions of the characters. With the characters in tow, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey does the worst thing it can do with them. It creates a story that doesn’t require them. It does flirt with being fun. In spite of itself…it eventually gets there.

2/5

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey Trailer

If you enjoyed this review of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, check out another horror movie that skirts copyright The Mean One