When embarking on the odessy that is low budget horror filmmaking, you’ve pretty much done half the work already if you’ve managed to think up a unique hook to hang all the murder and mutilation on and the makers of Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey managed to snag everybodies attention even before a single frame of film was shot. Essentially taking full advantage of the the rights of A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard beloved children’s character entering into public domain, we now have a slasher film where the pudgy, honey-loving old bear is now a hulking, soul-crushing serial killer in overalls who, aided by a similarly swole and psychotic Piglet, vents his abandonment issues on a group of nubile young women.
As awesomely perverse plots go, it’s fucking sensational – however, a kick-ass premise simply isn’t enough and some rudimentary filming skills are required to really bring an absurd premise to life.
Unfortunately this is where Pooh, turns to shit.
An animated prologue sets the scene: years ago, Christopher Robin made friends with a gaggle of animals who were living in the lush greenery of 100 Acre Wood and forged a bond that they all though would last a life time. However, it’s obvious that Pooh and his fuzzy cohorts never saw Toy Story 3 because soon the time come when Christopher grows up and abandons the animals in order to go to college and after a particularly harsh winter brings them all to the point of starvation, they go feral, eat one of their own and renounce any shred of their lingering humanity in order to survive.
All this is something Christopher Robin discovers to his dismay after bringing his wife-to-be back to 100 Acre Wood to introduce her to his childhood chums – but chum us exactly what the fiancee becomes after a grown and enraged Pooh and Piglet take their brutal revenge.
A short time later, Maria, in need of a break after a traumatic run-in with a stalker, inexplicably head to a remote cabin with a group of friends from university in order to get away from it all, but while the five friends settle down for some rest and relaxation, Pooh and Piglet to get a little R&R in themselves – rampaging and ruination, that is!
As the typically one dimensional girls start to fall one by one as the anthropomorphic arseholes take their violent frustrations out on their pretty flesh, the survivors have to fight to avoid violently getting Pooh all over themselves.
And…. that’s about it, as we go through the usual stalk and slash tropes that switch out your usual masked killers with two of the most adorable fictional creatures in literature – but if there’s any real lesson to be learned here, it’s that maybe people should keep a tighter hold of property rights.
So despite its wild premise, Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey is ultimately pretty awful and coasts by on that internet-breaking concept at the expense of thrills, coherence and anything even remotely approaching fun – instead relying chiefly on exploitative, vaguely misogynistic kills that aren’t even that interesting. Either due to its minuscule budget, or a complete lack of imagination, the movie – much like the titular killer himself – is content to plod along and merely go through the motions instead of actually taking its misuse of familiar characters and running with an experience that’s worthy of the crazy premise.
As I sat through the movie, I couldn’t help but think of other, fairly recent movies such as Terrifier and Hatchet that overcame tight resources with invention, turned their negatives to positives and delivered memorable, witty forecasts – fuck, even the bizarre, Nicholas Cage vehicle, Willy’s Wonderland added some sort of wit to it’s silly premise. But nope, director Rhys Frake-Waterfield seems solely dedicated to keeping things weirdly serious instead of adding some Sam Raimi/Peter Jackson style flair to proceedings and is far more interested staging sadistic, yet oddly flat murders.
The head crushing antics of our burly beasts should have been drawing whoops and cheers from its audience, but the gloomy nature of the film, plus and annoying abundance of obviously CGI blood is far too grim to be anything but a downer. Damien Leone’s Terrifier used its frenzied, uber-kills to subvert the rules and actually make Art the Clown a legitimately unnerving character, Pooh, on the other hand, isn’t even worthy of being a second-rate, Wrong Turn sequel and its female characters are interchangeable, I couldn’t even tell any of them apart the moment they split up – simply put, the script is so thinly written, if it wasn’t for a pair of fake boobs in a bikini, you wouldn’t be able to see it if it turned sideways.
No one was particularly expecting vast amounts of logic from a murderous Winnie The Pooh movie, but even then the film takes some galling leaps of faith in order to try and shoehorn the killy old bear into the same mindset as Michael Myers. The prologue insists that Pooh and Piglet have renounced speaking in order to turn their back on their human ways, well if that’s a fact then why are they wearing clothes? In fact, for a character known in for running around with a t-shirt and no pants, Pooh wears more human clothes now then before losing his marbles. Also, who in their right mind goes to a secluded cabin next to woods that seemingly are renowned for strange disappearances and mangled bodies in order to get over having a stalker break into their house? Like I said, these and many more inconsistencies might have been forgiven if the movie chose to have some fun, but instead its insistence on a serious tone shows up the flick for having more bad writing than a three year-old penning a book report on War and Peace.
However, we could at least have let Blood and Honey off with a caution if it had taken full advantage of Pooh and Piglet themselves – y’know, the whole reason the movie exists in the first place? Instead they’re rendered as rubbery headed bores (or boars, in Piglet’s care), loping about the place in silence as you practically yearn for the physical presence of Kane Hodder’s Jason – shit, I’d even take a Leatherface’s performance from a lame Texas Chainsaw sequel over these guys who seemingly have spent their murderous exile whipping Christopher Robin into a bloody pulp and gaining excessive weight.
A masterclass in how to take a cool, subversive idea and promptly smother the life right out of it, Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey is simply unbearable.
Oh bother…
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