Winnie the Pooh Review: Blood and Honey

US copyright by AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh expired last year. So while Disney controls much of the intellectual property, there was apparently nothing stopping British writer-director Rhys Frake-Waterfield from making a creepy horror film in which Pooh and Piglet, abandoned by Christopher Robin, find themselves in their turn into huge mutants and slaughter anyone. who ventures into the world. 100 acre forest. But just because they might doesn’t mean they should.

The 2019 horror version of the children’s TV show banana split was surprisingly decent, and other childhood classics ran into obscure reboots. There may have been some mileage in making a bear that emphasizes the toy story–like the pain of abandoned childhood friends. But that kicks it out before the credits roll, and then it turns into an AirBnB slasher. A group of young women on a girls’ weekend hanging out at all the M&M’s are shocked to be torn apart in nasty torture porn scenes.

Frake-Waterfield manages some nice camera angles and decent shots of foggy English woods, but it all falls apart when characters speak (dialogue sounds off-the-cuff or Google-translated) or perform the simplest physical actions. The “Scary Pooh” and “Feral Piglet” skins are scary at first sight. This wears off with overexposure and it becomes apparent that they have been overspending the budget as all sorts of violence is committed, but the characters are careful not to damage the heads which they will have to reuse in the already announced sequel.

With the poorest script and acting seen in a theatrically released horror film in living memory, it fails on every level. Without the blatant blaming of copyright, it would be a no-brainer The Easter Bunny Massacre OR The Curse of Humpty Dumpty. If you control the rights to Paddington, Rupert or Peppa Pig maybe start working on a charity fund to protect them from that sort of thing.