I guess as someone who grew up in the 80s, I should be utterly unfazed by thr arrival of any unnecessary horror sequels, but even I couldn’t help rolling my eyes up to the ceiling when news of a follow up to Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey came my way. Unless somehow you’d forgotten the giggles of amusement and groans of disdain that came in the wake of R.L. Milne’s cuddly, dyslexic, honey addicted teddy bear finally heading into public domain and promptly getting a misogynistic slasher adaptation, director Rhys Frake-Waterfield rushed out his project, utterly neglecting to add a shred of wit, intelligence, or – mostly importantly – fun to proceedings while probably thinking “if Sharknado can breach the public consciousness, then so can I”.
Annoyingly, despite the fact that Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey was a big pile of steaming bear shit, Frake-Waterfield was proved absolutely right as the project went viral virtually from the second it was announced. But now he’s been given a second chance and a bigger budget, can the director prove that this rapidly expanding franchise can be much more than exploitative Pooh?
When we last saw Christopher Robin, he had survived a brutal assault by his childhood friends, Winnie The Pooh and Piglet, who, after they were abandoned by an maturing Chris, went and lived in the woods and promptly went feral. No longer the cute, fluffy animals of Disney lore, Pooh and Piglet were now stocky, Wrong Turn-style juggernauts of rage, seeking vengence for the death of Eeyore who focused their energies on a group of girls out for a secluded weekend away.
The the wake of what became known as the Hundred Acre Wood Massacre, Robin has tried to establish a sense of normality as he works at Ashdown hospital, but after a movie is released that tells the unbelievable tale of the murders, public opinion starts to sway towards thinking that maybe Christopher himself was the true culprit all along.
But while their former friend is being treated as a pariah, Robin’s former buddies are gearing up for another attack and Pooh and Piglet are now joined by the likes of the scheming Owl, and the frenzied Tigger as they plot further carnage.
However, while the murders start up again, Robin starts doing some digging as he’s now become convinced that these murderous animal hybrids may somehow be connected to the repressed memories he has of his brother’s abduction that occured when they were very young and the identity of the man who took him.
However, while we struggle to handle the sudden arrival of an actual plot in a Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey movie, Pooh and Tigger advance on a local rave to continue their rampage and cause a fair amount of bother.
So, I’m going to have to admit it: Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey II is vastly superior to its misbegotten predecessor and I genuinely feel that this is the film that the filmmakers were intending to make from the beginning if they had the necessary budget and skills to pull it off. For a start, Rhys Frake-Waterfield essentially overhauls the entire production, recasting and retconning virtually anything he can get his hands on and strongly (and rather cleverly) hints that the first movie may have merely been a clumsy movie adaptation of what really happened, thus giving the sequel freedom to do whatever the hell it wants.
Thus Scott Chambers now steps into the role of Christopher Robin and does a noticably better job – although that’s probably because it actually gives him something to do rather than wander blindly through the woods and scream “sorry” at a chonky stuntman in a bear mask. Similarly, Pooh has been given a makeover to look more feral and less “Poohified”, but while the prosthetics don’t exactly reach Rick Baker levels of expertise, shit makeup trumps a shit over-the-head mask every day of the week and at least this means our antagonists can actually sort of form facial expressions. The expanding of the Hundred Acre gang is something of a selling point too – kind of – as a Freddy Kruegerish Tigger and an Owl who’s vaguely reminiscent of Jeepers Creepers’ Creeper join the party – primarily because Piglet has to take an early shower on account of a shotgun blast to the noggin. Yes, both look a bit shit and neither look anything remotely like a tiger or and owl (presumably to appease various lurking lawyers), but the upscaling of the villains not only leads to more gore, but it adds a much needed sense of fantasy whereas the first movie seemed only interested in inflicting pain on squealing women.
However, the most “appealing” aspect of Blood And Honey II is that with a threatened connected “Poohniverse” on the way that will also include twisted, monstrous version of the likes of Peter Pan, Pinocchio and Bambi, the movie ups its lore substantially to explain that Pooh, Tigger and the rest were all the results of scientific experiments conducted on kidnapped children to turn them into Doctor Moreau-esque hybrids. If this sounds like utter lunacy, then try to imagine it all spilling from the mouth of Simon fucking Callow, whose presence led me to initially be extraordinarily worried about the actor’s financial state; but the fact that he spills out all this exposition in a Scottish accent led me to believe that at least he’s having fun…
And guess what, by the time we got to the final thirty minutes of the movie, I was having fun too – kind of. The blood flows freely, it’s shot with a increased amount of competence and even though the logic about it is as tenuous as everything else about the flick, seeing Pooh waving around a flammable chainsaw (?) is still admittedly a cool image.
However, this still all feels like an opening salvo to a larger world that’s coming whether you want it to or not. Yes, we’re going to have an expanded universe of grisly Disney creatures (we even get creature designs during the end credits), but Blood And Honey III is already an absolute dead cert already. However, if the increase in quality improves, there’s a chance that one of these entries might actually be pretty watchable, but even during this early point, it’s obvious you either need to hop on the Pooh bandwagon or get the hell out of the way.
I realise that, to some people, announcing that there’s been improvements made between parts one and two is sort of like comparing a cat shitting either in or on one of your shoes – one is decidedly better than the other, but you’d probably prefer it if neither had happened – but it really is much more of a palatable enterprise.
Did I like it? No, but I certainly didn’t hate it – and in the world of low budget/high ambition horror films, sometimes that’s all the distiction you need.
Creating a mini-horror empire from scratch out of a ridiculous gimmick? That’s what Tiggers do best.
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