Ever since we first saw the image of the hulking, murderous duo of Winnie The Pooh and Piglet lay waste to a group of oblivious youths like a couple of story book Leatherfaces, the threat of the Poohniverse (aka. The Twisted Childhood Universe) has become ever more real. By this, I mean that due to the quality of the various entries, there seemed to be the very real threat that this whole enterprise is eventually going to blow harder than the big bad wolf on steroids.
But as each film came out (four so far), the strangest thing started to happen. While the first Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey was a basic, boring slasher that seemed to lack the basic, weird fun that a film with a killer kids charscter should have, each subsequent entry actually got that little bit better every time. Blood And Honey II widened it’s scope, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare went super dark and Bambi: The Reckoning gave us a noticable leap in filmmaking quality as its title beast charged around the place with impressively passable CGI. But could the kid-unfriendly franchise manage to finally pull off the impossible? A legitimately decent film?
Believe it or not, with Pinocchio: Unstrung, it seems that these crazy bastards have finally done it. Look, check out my ungrowing nose, I’m not even lying.
At the young age of fourteen, James has had something of a tough life already. After his parents were killed in a car accident, he was sent to live with his grandfather and even though he healed some of those emotional wounds by making two good friends, fate decides to slap young James across the face once again when one has to move away and another, Zach, succumbs to cancer. Bullied by mean schoolkids, James’ grandfather decides that enough is enough and builds a friend for his grandson that’ll never grow old, never get sick and will never leave. When I tell you that the grandfather’s name is Geppetto, you can probably guess what route he’s chosen to take, and thus Pinocchio – a living, wooden puppet – is born to offer never-ending companionship to a predictably amazed James.
However, it seems that the route Geppetto has taken to breathe life into the little, wooden tyke has resulted in some misshapen failures that lay scattered about the hidden crevices of his workshop. Only wanting to please, the easily manipulated Pinocchio is convinced by the gnarled prototype, the Wood Mother, to enlist a leering, humanoid cricket to be his guide and embark on a murder spree to keep James safe from those who mean him harm. After dispatching a drunk driver and an over zealous dentist, Pinocchio also starts harvesting their organs in order to finally become a real boy. But once James discovers what his little companion is up to, he races to call off his little, wooden buddy before the carnage becomes too great.
Now, let’s set some expectations here. While the Twisted Childhood gang have finally broken the glass ceiling of scoring a three star review, that doesn’t mean that Pinocchio: Unstrung is an all-time classic that suddenly gives the entire franchise retroactive glory. There’s still a lot of issues to be found here that’s plagued all the other entries thus far, such as non-existent plotting, awful dialogue and performances that suggest that the lion’s share of the cast don’t even know what acting actually is, let alone know how to do it. However, you can tell that with every single entry, this group of determined filmmakers trying to bring this absurd franchise to life are actually learning their craft more and more with every film. Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield has come a long way from the first two Winnie The Pooh movies, and you can’t fault the ambition the man has by making a low budget film where the main speaking role is a little, animatronic puppet with the same amount of screentime as Chucky.
Not only have the technical aspects of the franchise greatly improved, but the filmmakers actually manage to explore the full potential of what you can actually do with a killer Pinocchio. It often means that the story itself is a bit of a mess as the script can’t seem to settle on a single plot line for its spindly lead (one minute he’s causing fatal accidents, then he’s murdering people in a misguided attempt to keep James safe, then he’s harvesting organ from his victims), the the sheer energy and enthusiasm literally bounces off the screen and is weirdly infectious. However, most importantly of all, Pinocchio: Unstrung is genuinely funny in ways that a lot of the previous movies in the TUC weren’t.
Watching an apologetic Pinocchio mistakenly cause the splattery death of two people in a gym riffs nicely on the grim slapstick of Final Destination, and when the Puppet graduates from manslaughter to straight up murder, his good natured quips are genuinely amusing.
It also helps that the increased production values not only give us high quality, practical effects, but a couple of genuine, horror legends in the cast to boot. Casting Richard Brake as Geppetto is something of a stellar move as he manages the abrupt shift from kindly grandfather to deranged bringer of wooden life without it coming across as too clumsy and even better yet, Robert Englund provides various Freddy Krueger witticisms as the voice of the cricket and this addition of actual recognisable names gives the film even more credibility.
However, the film is at its best when letting its misguided lead totter from one gruesome situation to another while letting the cruelty of the script take over. When Pinocchio isn’t clawing the skin clean off the face of one victim, he’s bashing out the teeth of another, or even telling lies to push his growing nose into the brain of an odious bully. I mean, how can you not appreciate a film that has Pinocchio stalk someone in a swimming pool by having his nose cut through the water like the fin of the shark from Jaws?
The Twisted Childhood Universe finally manages to reach something approaching its full potential before hitting its big team-up film. While all the rampant gore, warped children’s characters and questionable plotting is all still present and correct, there’s a sense of fun here that goes beyond its antagonist simply going from being childhood icons to becoming misshapen, vicious sadists. Better yet, the film wins you over further with behind the scenes footage that plays over the end credits that clue you in to just how hard the filmmakers worked to bring this film to life, and regardless to your feelings about the Twisted Childhood Universe at large, you can’t help but feel admiration for their can-do spirit.
Displaying a sense of twisted innocence the franchise should have been displaying all along, Pinocchio: Unstrung leapfrogs off of the promise shown by Bambi: The Reckoning to be the first, genuinely good entry the TCU has actually seen. Great gore gags, horror royalty and an entertaining lead creature means that the prospect of Winnie The Pooh, Bambi and Pinocchio teaming up to fight Peter Pan suddenly feels like an event I wooden mind seeing after all…
Who nose where this franchise could ultimately end up.
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