Christopher Robin is headed off to college and he has abandoned his old friends, Pooh and Piglet, which then leads to the duo embracing their inner monsters.
Ahhhh, Winnie The Pooh; the chubby little cubby that inspired multiple texts over the years to embrace philosophical meanings and also dive into the insights of human behavior. Regardless, this character has remained as idyllic and trouble-free as AA Milne first imagined it for generations – until now.
Even taking into account that I knew “Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey” wasn’t going to be good, I….was…..dumbfounded at….how watchable it was.
Let me try to soak up some blood here and get some positives over with: surprisingly, the cinematography was decent half the time between its occasional tilted angles, well-composed shots and solid framework making good use of its rural nighttime setting. It’s well-lit enough, Andrew Scott Bell's score is hearty but generic and repetitive, the make-up effects are efficient even if the CG blood we see detracts from the gore and the kill scenes, in general, are the premier definition of “simple, but effective”.
You can’t say it doesn’t live up to the R-rating.
Rhys Frake-Waterfield is nowhere near Daniel Farrands’ level of disparaging slander and mortification but his sense and style of directing is rather forgettable. He’s straightforward and competent with his vision but tries too hard to make it something it probably shouldn’t be; I’d say Rhys misunderstood the assignment as much as he misread it.
Pacing might be brisk but feels particularly leaden and heavy; most of that boils down to how poor the editing is. While it doesn’t entirely drag on, there are entire scenes that feel added to pad out the runtime, and plodding chases. Costume design was ridiculous, dialogue was hard to listen to due to the messy sound design on top of how repetitive it gets and while the acting from every one is passable, any characters they’re stuck with are frustrating and don’t do them any favors.
There isn’t much I can say about the story that others haven’t regurgitated a thousand times already but I can definitely try: yes, this is a lazy, rushed attempt to cash in on the IP now that it's public domain. Painfully threadbare and tediously restrained, it takes the questionable but vaguely interesting idea of having the creatures of the 100 Acre Wood grow resentful after being abandoned and lashing out at humanity…..and completely wastes it on the most basic of horror blueprints. Operating on dismal curiosity alone, it offers no proper buildup to any of its scenes or any framing for a narrative beyond its clickbait-like title. The few times it could use some dark humor to reset the tension and establish a sense of purpose, it prefers to stay straight-faced and unrelievedly grim to the point I was laughing AT the movie instead of with it.
Speaking of humor, almost every-time I laughed was completely unintentional. Between lacking in self-aware humor, the inarticulate designs of Pooh and Piglet, the incomplete ending and gratuitous female nudity that feels unnecessary and not particularly alluring, I was suffering major tonal whiplash from every waking moment.
There is a VAGUE resonance that can be deciphered between Pooh, Piglet and the backstory of one of the main characters and it hints at a bigger story then what we got: one about the distressing feeling of other people feeling entitled to getting more out of you than you’re willing to or capable of giving them. How one can mistake your maturity for selfishness and blow it out of proportion. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go any farther than a few meaningless conversations and the few conversations that do touch upon this don’t get elaborated on further and no personality comes out of it.
For a low budget outing, it’s not the worst thing to come out this year but between mutilating the beloved children’s book character into a slasher and not even making it an entertaining one, it’s a completely amateurish outing that NARROWLY lives up to the excuse of being so bad you can laugh at it.
