Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Owl, and Tigger decide to take the fight to the town of Ashdown, home of Christopher Robin, leaving a bloody trail of death and mayhem in their wake.
To anyone who forgot that terrible Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey movie from last year, congratulations, you have to be reminded of its watchable but ultimately head-scratching existence thanks to “Blood and Honey 2”. But there is an ultimatum.
It’s actually getting better. If only by the standards of what the first film presented.
While Rhys’ Waterfield’s directing is still strictly straightforward, you can tell how hard he tried to make it appear multi-faceted. This midnight movie appeal to his approach reveals someone who’s open to adopting to the circumstances given and while creativity isn’t high here, passion has been re-ignited.
Repetition barely avoids being the name of the game regarding the production design. Not many of the locations here have been given a new lease on life but actual variety in the settings are present. A large departure from the somewhat disarming rural environment previously, taking the action into the town was a necessary progression but I don’t feel enough was done to really sell the degradation of the diminishing sanity and morality of the townsfolk; only a few snippets are shown before brushed aside.
Picture quality of the camerawork is a constant tug-of-war between bolstering simplicity and regressing back to constant shaky-cam and drab framing; the nippy editing does tip it slightly in the favor of the former though, thankfully. Lighting thankfully remains well-lit, its runtime is very nimble and swift at only 90 minutes, no longer feeling as heavy of leaden as last time, costume fittings and makeup applications are a better use of craftsmanship than its predecessor and Andrew Scott Bell comes in clutch once again with resounding and a strong atmospheric score. In a firm departure from the previous film’s use of the R-rating, there’s actual playful anticipation for the kills here; many of them are wickedly more messy and creative and they help the tone balance out its self-serious with more appropriate B-movie hilarity.
Sucks a good half of the digital effects still don’t look all that polished and it still suffers from stupid predictable jumpscares.
What can I say about the acting other than it’s also pretty ok now? Scott Chambers does much better carrying a more emphatic screen presence than Nikolai Leon as the lead and despite being stuck with rather remedial characters and archetypes, everyone else is either clearly having fun.
Look, we all know these stories are nothing more but an excuse for them to do really stupidly awesome kills behind an underbaked premise that’s rougher than sandpaper and for the most part, it’s still very shaky. Competently lukewarm but scattershot also, you’re literally given a counterbalance between its best and worst vices and neither side really wins out. It’s still a lazy attempt to cash in on an IP now in public domain and the entire package is shameless in how predictable it is. But at least, unlike its predecessor, it doesn’t feel desperate to reach out and crave for any type of substance its stubby little claws can get their hands on. Yes, not only does this sequel actually have a story attached to it, it actually insinuates any and all shreds of competency the first film hinted at. Sure, the end result isn’t microfiber-cloth clean but literally anything is better than the first film.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed the parallels made between Christopher Robin and Pooh, both feeling boxed in and isolated partially because of the choices they made previously but also due to the townsfolk either refusing to believe the truth or taking it to the extreme and forcing everyone’s hands regardless. A decent job is done diving further into the psychology of each monster and dissecting their motives, expanding upon the ideas of having these once-cherished creatures grow resentful to humanity after being abandoned and even go a step further beyond that. Hell, the big twist halfway through that’s revealed reminded me a lot of Alphas’s determination experiments lab from Undertale and how that single decision to play god ruined so many people’s lives.
Stakes feel acknowledged here somewhat and you feel like the film is actually trying to say something and it rewards you for your curiosity.
Unfortunately, many of said issues from the first film carry over: its still straight-faced and unrelievedly grim to a degree, there are still entire scenes that feel added to ONLY pad out the runtime, dialogue is amateurish and despite the welcome changes to the narrative, nothing about it is really that deep. Every opportunity that arises to expand the universe and lore of this world isn’t always given ample time to follow through on its teasing, mostly because the breadcrumbs feel too cumbersome in a series that hasn’t fully earned its stripes….and partially due to the film itself not having a long enough runtime to bolster those.
You ask me, it’s better if the third film just goes completely Coco for Cocoa Puffs to get the most mileage out of this premise because it still feels like it’s holding back.
But let’s keep in mind, people, that a Winnie the Pooh film that portrays the character as a serial mass murderer is still a premise that will continue to turn most people away, and even with this sequel succeeding on the bare minimum with a higher budget and grander ambitions, this film still perhaps bit off more than it can chew.
