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ultraericthered · 2 months

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Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (really Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey Take 2, For Real This Time!), AKA Where The Bloody Honey Was THIS Last Year???

I’ve not seen this yet but I, as sincere and dedicated a fan of Winnie The Pooh as you’ll ever find, made it no secret how much I loathed last year’s so-called Pooh horror flick (which I did not even actually watch and never will), thinking it an abomination purely because it didn’t have the stones or the vision to actually go all in with what it promised and instead gave us random ass generic slashers in bad rubber Pooh and Pig masks killing screaming girls and tormenting a useless “Christopher Robin” and his fiancé, with a Pooh-related backstory tacked on at the beginning and then never followed through on with what the movie actually delivered on screen. Had the film embraced the absurd camp horror in the very concept of the Hundred Acre Wood gang as feral predators, I’d have respected it. I’m far from alone in thinking this too: the film won the Worst Picture Razzie award for 2023 for a reason. It was garbage in its purest form.

So then this “sequel”, which I was not anticipating and was feeling I’d rather ignore, comes out and actually gives us exactly that! Like, what the Hell? This movie isn’t just doing what its predecessor ought to have been all about doing from the get-go, it even does what the 2022 Grinch-themed holiday slasher The Mean One failed at as well! It improves on what came before through two things: being competently made in all areas (like, it actually has a significant budget this time around), and actually taking some real twisted joy and fun in its reimagining of Milne lore and what can be done with that. Suddenly, Christopher Robin is a major player in the story and a psychologically distraught man played by a different, better actor. Pooh and Piglet now actually resemble mutant animal people instead of human killers in masks and they’re properly motivated in their killing. Tigger appears as a very Freddy Krueger-esque murderous maniac who puts his “bouncy” style of killing to great use. And good lord, Owl is a badass, terrifying menace who really makes the horror of the story work while still not losing his own morbid humor. And that throwaway backstory from before? Thrown away! In its place is a much stronger one that serves as perhaps the darkest possible medium answer to the age old “so are they real sentient critters or stuffed animals that Christopher only imagines are real?” question. And how it manages to get away with all this is perhaps the one area of pure genius that the film has got. Tellingly, the screenplay was written by an actual script writer this time rather than the hack director, and both this writer and the producer came up with the remedy for the disaster that was the first film: its events did not truly occur in this universe. In-universe, what was turned out last year was a cheap, low budget, schlocky horror film based on the real Christopher Robin’s account of a massacre he’d survived out in the woods, with that film lazily misrepresenting what had actually happened and what he’d actually experienced when it did. By having the first Blood and Honey exist as exactly the godawful film that it is within this new cinematic universe, Blood and Honey 2 is giving us permission to pass on watching it and disregard it entirely, as it’s just a bastardization of the true story that actually matters to films starting with this one. You could not ask for a better saving throw than that!

Its core area of weakness, however, is the story itself and how it’s managed in terms of the film’s pace and tone. Maybe this would’ve played better if this had been what we got in early 2023, but since it instead has come after last year’s Five Nights At Freddy’s film adaptation, the similarities become impossible not to notice, complete with our main protagonist being haunted by childhood trauma and playing this dead straight even while off on the side there are absurd looking animals slaughtering people in ridiculous ways and being very tongue-in-cheek about it. It’s like the writer envisioned a plot to a serious horror/thriller film but applied it to this gleefully dumb, schlocky B movie horror campfest based on a beloved child-friendly property, and these things just don’t go together very well.

All things considered, this is a mediocre indie horror film based on famed A.A Milne stories and characters that revels in its own mediocrity and the gross, senseless, nonsensical novelty of its premise…and in being so, is a HUGE glow up from the first attempt at it, which was a complete nothing of a film offering nothing of value to any human being who could ever have the misfortune of watching it. This one at the very least delivers on what it promises to be and does so with far more confidence, competence, sincere passion and amusement than its predecessor. If we end up getting more Pooh horror films like this, I’d not mind giving them a look, though I doubt there’s anything they could do that’d really wow me or anyth…….

This is the start of a cinematic “Poohniverse” that will go full Avengers in crossing the films over? Okaaaay, that’s interes……

Heffalumps and Woozles confirmed for B&H3?!??!

#Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 #opinion #criticism #review #horror #surprisingly improved sequel #discontinuity

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lnevada · 11 months

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Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) - Slam Review (with textual support comparisons to other, better horror films):

This film opens with such an interesting & nostalgia-bait hook that longs to corrupt your most innocent childhood memories. And then it never addresses the supposedly ‘established lore’ again!

If you show a person who has never watched a horror movie solely this film, their impression of all horror movies going forward would be every negative, stereotypical trope horror has ever been inflicted with that creators have been trying and succeeding to separate themselves from for the last 25+ years.

This film appears on camera as though it was written in a day, filmed in a week, & edited in an afternoon. Upon a first passive watch, there are two noticeable cuts where - scenes were not even necessarily left on the cutting room floor - characters completely pivot or change entire locations and/or appear in a new scenario entirely with no context or coherency (to squeeze in another kill, presumably). I can't imagine the errors an active viewer would notice.

Now I love a silly, underwritten slasher as much as the next girl. But, if the kills are not on point & offer something new for a seasoned viewer, there's no drive to check out the ‘new flick' in the first place. It's clear all the focus & budget went to the kills, but even with this level of attention there was simply no DETAIL. None were original (drawing from Texas Chain Saw & Halloween to name a few), the CGI was gaudy (what were the bees even THERE FOR?!/Candyman references maybe?!) & most were unrealistic (the persons would have been ‘dead' prior to their point of dying on screen).

(Additional note): Not to mention the title sequence after the promising hook pulls directly from House of 1000 Corpses (yet another ‘terrible movie’ but fun watch) but is executed in such a dry/unimaginative, underdeveloped way the whole sequence serves to remind you that there are better horror movies you could be watching than B&H.

(Speaking of comparative horror films): I think the only difference between Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey vs. Terrifier is that Art the clown is an instant classic & a unique ‘killer' entry into the genre with graphic, over the top (albeit, usually requiring the viewer to suspend their disbelief) kills that were UNIQUE & added creativity & fodder to the over saturated landscape. While, yes, B&H is very purposefully drawing on an OG source material & the creators' goal was to make a ‘poor film' from the jump as its own sort of commentary (on copy write abilities), after the cold open/hook, no effort was made to make Pooh or his sidekick memorable, lasting villains. All lore was scraped in the name of earning a body count. And for a slasher, no connection to the villains AND, on the flip, no connection to the victims is the biggest let down of them all for a fan of the genre.

I just hope the cast/crew had fun on set creating this one.

#winnie the pooh #Winnie the Pooh blood and honey #blood and honey #movie review #rant #text post #cinema #horror #horror fan #horror movies #movie recc #movie critique #multi fandom blog #terrifier #gore lover #blood and gore

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blackcatfilmprod · 1 year

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youtube

Hi Guys,

Tonight Boys 'n' Ghouls Film Review Podcast reviews Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRtPiN_UQxk via YouTube

#Winnie the Pooh #Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey 2023 #Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey #Horror #Slasher #Honey #Blood #Boys n Ghouls Film Review Podcast #Boys n Ghouls Film Review #Boys n Ghouls #Boys #Ghouls #Dark Fantasy #Dark #Fantasy #Youtube

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ltamoviesblog · 1 year

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Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) - Movie Review

Well, I'm not really sure what I expected.

I could probably rant for many paragraphs about how Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey doesn't work, but it's not worth it to give this movie anymore of my time than necessary. Absolutely none of this movie works beyond the initial setup.

As a slasher film, you get bottom of the barrel quality and effort. The acting is bad, but it's tough to blame the actors as they have nothing to work with. The lack of character is actually kinda shocking. Even some of the worst slasher films set up characters and the dynamics between them better than this. The dialogue and decisions made by characters only serve to give a few unintentionally funny moments.

Then, as a new take on Winnie the Pooh, you get nothing interesting. Beyond the setup, some character names, and the fact that the killers are wearing cheap, ridiculous looking Pooh and Pig masks, there is nothing in the film that attempts to use the Pooh IP in any creative way.

You may get some "so bad it's good" laughs, but beyond that, this movie is a waste of time.

Grade: F

#movie review #winnie the pooh #blood and Honey #winnie the pooh blood and Honey

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thenefilim · 1 year

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Review - Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

After finally seeing Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey all I can say is “Oh Bother!”.

#Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey #movie review #horror movies #voices from the balcony

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rookie-critic · 1 year

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Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023, dir. Rhys Frake-Waterfield) - review by Rookie-Critic

On January 1, 2022, the classic Winnie-the-Pooh character lineup became public domain, meaning anyone and everyone could use the names and likenesses of these characters without any threat from Disney of legal action. Of course, less than half a year later, it was announced that an independent British director would be making a horror film based off the property, and thus Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was born. I love stuff like this: I think it's hilarious, I think it's fun, and, if done right, it can be genuinely good to boot. I was excited going into the film, and was ready to see Pooh Bear and Piglet go on a Roger Corman-esque, Birdemic-y B-movie murder spree. That definitely happens, although the results were definitely mixed at best.

I'll start with the positives this time, and say the most impressive thing by far in this is the Winnie the Pooh head. From what little promotional material I'd seen prior to watching the movie, Pooh and Piglet's heads kind of just looked like rubber Halloween masks, which can provide a lot of hilarious campy fun, so I wasn't complaining, but that's not what they ended up being at all. Pooh's head reads as fully animatronic; the ears wiggle, the mouth moves, the area around the eyes moves, it helps bring so much personality to the this murderous version of the character. Piglet's is a little less impressive and doesn't have as much articulation as Pooh's does, so he definitely feels a little more mask-y, but like I said before, that provides its own level of campy charm. I'll also give the actors credit: I wouldn't call the acting in this movie good, by any means, but for something like this you're normally getting the bottom of the barrel scrapings and some truly horrible performances, but these weren't terrible. Nikolai Leon, who plays Christopher Robin, I especially took note of. Again, it wasn't "good" acting, but I was surprised by how not awful it was.

Sadly, I think the good stops there. I had a good handful of issues with Blood and Honey, and none of them have to do with the quality of the film's technical side. Yes the CG blood was bad, yes the camerawork was sloppy, blah blah blah, whatever. This is the Winnie the Pooh slasher flick, I'm not looking for Lawrence of Arabia. There are two big problems with this film. One is that, even taking into consideration an almost entirely female cast and the fact that this is a horror movie, the film seems maliciously cruel towards women. The second is that, for something with as hilarious of a concept as this and that seemingly had some decently creative ideas, the kills and the scares were kind of boring. As far as that first problem goes, this is something we've seen time and time and time again in horror, especially in slasher films. There are a lot of tired, sexist tropes that just don't seem to die, and Blood and Honey contributes to a lot of them. I actively rolled my eyes multiple times, including an incredibly uncomfortable scene in which a female character with no arc and no defining characteristics is brutally killed in a gruesome way that, to me, went on for way too long, with some incredibly unnecessary nudity thrown in for good measure. It's not as bad as THAT kill scene from the first Terrifier film, but it wasn't fun to watch, nonetheless. Our main character, who surprisingly isn't Christopher Robin (another issue I had), is given this empathetic and traumatic backstory that Frake-Waterfield had absolutely no interest in weaving into the larger narrative, which really begs the question as to why we even bothered with anyone other than Pooh, Piglet, and Christopher Robin to begin with. The central group of women really only exist as cannon fodder for our beloved children's story characters, and the setup as to why this had happened to the furry residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood was interesting enough to be able to carry a 90-ish minute film by itself. Instead, we get something that's largely a "paint-by-numbers" B-movie slasher film, which leads me into my second problem from earlier; the movie as a whole, and specifically the kills, feel really uninspired. There are moments where there seem to be sparks of creative instinct (Pooh has the absolutely wild ability to control the bees that inhabit the Hundred-Acre Wood, there's a scene in which Pooh whips Christopher Robin with the nail end of Eeyore's tail, stuff like that), but these ideas go largely unexplored. Instead, we're relegated to watching Piglet and Pooh chase after our protagonists with chains and sledgehammers for most of the film, and that's really too bad.

I don't mean to rant and make it seem like I'm taking the Winnie the Pooh horror film too seriously, because I definitely was not, but I feel like there are ways to make these really low-concept, dumb-but-fun, shtick-y horror films not suck, and it's not even that hard. Just be creative, have fun, and stay away from harmful and tired genre tropes, simple. While this film certainly had fun, and was running at maybe 20% creativity, it just couldn't accomplish what it set out to do.

Score: 4/10

Currently only in theaters.

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xarliclub · 2 months

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#WinnieThePooh #BloodAndHoney nos trae de regreso al asesino del Bosque de los 100 acres, con amigos. Es el inicio de un universo slasher más grande. El #TCU o #Poohniverse

#xarliclub #movie #movies #film #films #Cine #Cinema #peli #pelis #peliculas

#xarliclub #movies #films #cine #cinema #blog #reviews #peliculas #pelis #news #blood and honey #winnie the pooh #tigger #indie #slasher movies

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irresponsibleink · 2 months

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Blood and Honey 2 review

**No Spoilers**

I watched Blood and Honey 2 on opening night and I was surprised. The first movie was mediocre and my hopes for the sequel were in the gutter. It seems director Rhys Frake-Waterfield worked out some kinks from the first movie. Maybe constructive criticism did its job here and Frake-Waterfield listened to the reviews of the first film.

The first Blood and Honey film put spectacle over storytelling. The production team expected the sensationalism of the concept to carry it through and they were mistaken. Reviewing the first film in any serious capacity would be a mistake, as it’s clear they weren’t trying to make a serious film. They took the sequel more seriously, which opened the door for guys like me to tear into it. For people like me who have seen a lot of slasher flicks, Blood and Honey was nothing to write home about. During my viewing of the first film, I had to fight to stay awake.

The sequel changed some details from the first film. For starters, this film includes characters such as Owl and Tigger, who weren’t in the public domain when the first movie was in production. I was pissed Tigger wasn’t in the first film. Tigger is the Batman to Pooh’s Superman and if anyone can tell you with a straight face they prefer Pooh to Tigger they are not to be trusted. Another change I enjoyed was the redesign of Pooh and Piglet. I understand the original design was about taking the original character of Pooh and making him scary, but you can’t tell me that Pooh is supposed to be a bear-human hybrid and then show me a man with yellow leathery skin. In this film, they updated Pooh to look more animalistic, giving him hints of fur and razor-sharp teeth.

They also changed the leading man, recasting Christopher Robin’s character with producer Scott Chambers. The acting in this film is pretty standard. The strongest link in the crew was Tallulah Evans who had good charisma as her character Lexy. Except Lexy, the supporting roles were not greatly noticeable and they didn’t take up a lot of runtime.

The special effects were a step up, as well. In the first film, the crummy effects made the gore look a lot less like blood and guts and more like some cheap props you could buy at a discount store. I'm surprised that Pooh didn't appear after the credits and thank PartyCity for sponsoring the movie. In the sequel, the props looked very professional. The gore looked real enough to make your stomach turn but not so real you can’t enjoy snacking during the movie.

Character-wise, I was invested in Christopher’s story. I was rooting for him right from the beginning. This film opens with everyone in his small town believing he’s a brutal killer and that leaves him on a quest to deal with his trauma and confront his monsters (both real and figurative). I liked the supporting characters. It was very endearing to see how much Lexy and Bunny (Thea Evans) cared about Christopher and believed in him when a lot of people didn’t.

While I was invested in Christopher’s journey, the first three-quarters of the movie dragged a bit. Christopher is on a quest for answers, so naturally, a lot of the film is him trying to get to those answers any way he can. But this is still a slasher film! During this “investigative” period, they throw in a few kills to keep us invested, but Christopher and Pooh don’t even confront each other until the final quarter of the film.

Speaking of the kills, they were very brutal. Bear traps, exploding campers, flaming chainsaws, what fun! A lot of people may think, ‘A flaming chainsaw? That isn’t realistic!’ All I have to say is, dude, if you’re worried about how a flaming chainsaw isn’t realistic then maybe a movie about animal-human hybrids isn’t for you.

The score was fine, but there were times when the music was a little out of place. It was disorienting to be watching a sad or frightening scene and hear music that sounded hopeful. The narrator also took the piss out of the movie. It was so jarring to watch a serious and intense scene and then to jump to narration like someone is reading a bedtime story to us.

About that plot twist… Words cannot describe how out of left field it was. I’m glad they explained where the creatures came from, but… yikes. It was entertaining, but a bit convoluted. Also, why did Pooh have to be that character the whole time? That just complicates Christopher and Pooh’s relationship in a way it didn’t need to be complicated. They already had a troubled past together, so why make it more tragic for no reason?

Then there was the rave scene. I almost cheered when Tigger came onto the scene. I love Tigger! Whether he’s bouncing around in a colorful cartoon or murdering people with his claws and calling his victims fluorescent bitches, Tigger is the OG of the Hundred Acre Wood. And it was so fun to see Pooh batter people around while trap music played. It reminded me of that party bus scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022). I also loved how Pooh and the others kept Tigger in a cage because they knew how fucking crazy he was.

Was it a good movie? Uh, sure? It wasn’t the best slasher I’ve ever seen but watching it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I would wait until this one hits streaming services before you go watch it. A part of me feels stupid for spending money to watch such a mediocre movie when I could have just waited for it to come to Peacock. That being said, I’m genuinely excited to see what else the Twitsted Childhood Universe has to offer.

I believe Frake-Waterfield is self-aware about how stupid these movies are. But they’re fun to watch and I bet they’re pretty fun to make. There are worse moves to watch this weekend.

Final score = 62.5%

Caleb Stepp ([email protected])

#winnie the pooh #tw blood #blood and honey #movie review #horror movies #horror films #slashers #horror review #poohniverse #spoiler free

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spook-study · 5 months

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Public Domain is everything. The all encompassing freedom of Public Domain has never been more clear than in the horror genre. Poe, Lovecraft, Shelley, Verne, Stoker, Leroux- all up for grabs. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones getting the living touch of fear. Horror is bolstered by Public Domain, expanded by it, and it makes for some wild movies. Filmmakers lovingly poking at non-spooky classical literature is how you get fun little things like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016). People wait with bated breath on their tippy toes to lampoon the stories they love by adding a little bloody flair. I can't wait to see what people do with Mickey Mouse. While these movies or books may not always be the best, they’re always worth a smile. But some people just end up bespoiling well known properties with what seems to be very little thought.

And that’s how we get thing like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.

Where do I even begin here. This movie was a mess. First of all, Pooh and Piglet are the only two members of the Hundred Acre Wood who appear. Instant disappointment. Is it too much to ask that we get to see Eeyore go crazy and attack some unsuspecting young folk? You know behind all that ho-hum attitude there's got to be some rage brewing. What about Owl? Terror from above and ambush attacks oh how I wanted for thee. Kanga and a now grown Roo could have had some freaky mother/son crap going on. I mean it's a horror movie that actively corrupts these characters, so why not throw in a little weird anthropomorphic animal incest? Roo always was quite attached to his mother. Rabbit could have been unnaturally fast, a speed killer, nothing but a blur before victims were tugged off the screen to their untimely demise. Plus the munching? Rabbits are munchers. Imagine big Rabbit munch crunching on bones like they were carrots. Gopher could have been a knock-out, huge mounds of earth moving towards someone until he snatched them up like he was a giant worm in Tremors (1980). That's just off the top of my head.

These are things that could have related the characters to their original properties, which the movie doesn't even do for the only two characters from the Hundred Acre Wood that are actually in it.

Tigger. Tigger was not in this movie. I am livid just thinking about it. I don't like to swear too much when I write my silly little spook studies, but honestly what the fuck? What the fuck! He is a tiger! You know, one of the deadliest ambush predators in existence? On average they apparently kill 1800 people every year. He could have been Shere Khan times a thousand. Plus he bounces? That would have been freak city. It just felt like one of Blood and Honey's many missed opportunities. They could have each had one amazing kill apiece, the body count in this movie was certainly high enough for it. Kanga, Roo, Rabbit, Eeyore, and Gopher I can understand not using, even though Roo was always my personal favorite.

No Tigger though? Unfathomable. Tigger got his own movie. I know the full group is big and maybe too much to tackle, but Tigger is such a popular character it felt weird that he wasn't in this. We get Pooh and we get Piglet. Two characters must mean they both must look amazing, though, right?

Wrong. The design for them was bad, plain and simple. It really grinds my gears thinking of all the wasted potential of having Blood and Honey be a Milne property. It could have been so campy and weird and fun and instead we got two guys walking around with masks on. They looked like a couple of friends put together Halloween costumes for 'scary Pooh and Piglet' and splurged on the good masks. The rest of the costuming consists of clothes you might find in your weird uncle's closet. There were no alterations to any part of them below the neck. They had human feet, human hands, and human mannerisms. Pooh is wearing overalls. Piglet is fully dressed as well, but at least his clothing is worn. Pooh's plaid shirt, on the other hand, looks practically brand new. The only clothing Pooh should have been wearing is a tattered red crop top. Piglet should have been naked. I mean how gross would that have been? Naked Piglet, hog out, goring you to death. Now that would have been a good time!

Money was almost definitely the issue. When faced with a movie that was as much of a let down as this one, sometimes it's hard to remember to take those things into account. Less money, less cast, less effects. 'Shoe-string budget' might even be too generous to describe what the cost of this movie. But it isn't necessarily about the money you have, rather where that money goes. I think Tigger should have been budgeted for. Maybe lower the body count, which saves on actor pay, costuming pay, and special effects pay. Keep it to one or two simple locations with minimal travel. With unfathomably small budgets like the one for Blood and Honey, it might have been beneficial to tighten it up even more. Shrink it, contain it, make it more intimate. Blood and Honey felt too big for its britches. Perhaps there should have been more focus on the costuming, makeup, and effects that might have gone into our childhood comfort characters. I'm very passionate about the practical elements in movies, so these designs were totally disappointing to me.

I've spent a lot of time talking about things this movie didn't do, which can be a bit unfair considering the constraints of budget and production. I try my best to take movies as they are presented, but Blood and Honey gave me so little it makes it easy to talk about what might have been. Why not this, why not that. But let's get back into what the movie was.

The story, unfortunately, wasn't strong enough to make up for the lackluster creature designs. In typical Christopher Robin fashion, he eventually grows up and says goodbye to his friends. He had always brought sweets and tea with him, but upon his cessation they can't provide for themselves, go crazy and, for lack of a better term, become cannibalistic. They eat poor Eeyore.

Is it cannibalism if they're eating a member of a different species? Not really, but I think that's probably the best way to describe it. They eat him because they begin to starve.

Pooh, who notoriously scavenges for honey and should be hibernating anyway starves. Rabbit, who has his own garden and would stockpile for winter starves. Gopher would eat roots, Owl would hunt for small prey, both starving. Kangaroos eat mushrooms, among other things, and they both still starve. Piglet is potentially the only ones who would have difficulty providing for himself just because pigs need a rich diet and a lot of food. But in the source material they have a communal table, and even feed Christopher Robin. But there's no gory family meal here; it turns out they cannot live without the food he brought with him. Real animals can and do become food dependent on humans, but these characters are not fully animals. The movie even tells you so, calling them abominations. They have human intellect! They have a community. They built houses. They swing knives and hammers around with deadly intent. But they can't do farming. Seems they can eat ass with the best of them, though.

While we see Eeyore's munched upon skeletal remains, there's no explanation for the rest of the group being missing. Were they eaten, frozen to death, or killed by a hunter? If the movie did tell me I ended up missing it, which was no surprise because guess what? They do not speak! They don't fucking speak! Why isn't killer Pooh "hoo-hoo"-ing? Where were the rumblies in his tumbly before he ate someone? That iconic voice coming out of a huge man-bear as he kills? Come on. I mean it's right there! Honestly I felt like so many issues with this movie could have been solved if they were given dialogue. Every member of the Hundred Acre Wood talks, that's just part of it.

Christopher Robin wasn't just imagining his adventures either. His friends are real. So where was the camp? Beloved early childhood characters turned killers is such a fun idea, so where was the fun? Why did it feel like this movie wanted it to be taken so seriously? It's Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, not Deliverance (1972).

Upon being "abandoned" by Christopher Robin, they grew resentful of humanity and eventually turned into killers of people, not just depressed donkeys. This makes enough sense, except they're active serial killers and have been for what seems like years. They plot, kidnap, and torture with intent and there's a slew of unsolved murders and disappearances in the Hundred Acre Wood. This suggests the Wood is traversed regularly enough to at least find some bodies. So why does anyone go there anymore? How many people have to die for the Wood to be fully canvassed? Why was there a huge mansion right on the edge of it, which our completely forgettable human characters rent?

Given the evidence, it should have been easy enough for law enforcement to find their little encampment, it isn't like it's hidden or invisible. Plenty of characters go there, too, so it isn't only accessible to children. That could have been interesting, if you needed the eyes of a child to get there. Plus, it would have forced the introduction of a character who's representative of the source's target age group, making it easy for the viewer to relate to their younger self- the version that actually watched or read Winnie the Pooh. Everyone in Blood and Honey is a young adult or older.

By far the biggest travesty of all is that Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey isn't a monster movie, it's a slasher movie. Every one of Christopher Robin's friends is an animal, but the filmmakers decided not to make a monster movie. Why even bother with the property, then? Pooh is running around with knives and weapons, doing hand-to-hand combat, drowning people. Folks, he drives a car.

He drives a car.

Insane. Absolutely insane.

I mean what in the hell? They are strange chimeras, amalgamations of human and animal. Blood and Honey leaned so heavily into human that they hardly seemed like animals at all. This also doesn't make much sense within the logic of the movie. Pooh can drive a car and stalks kids with the intention to scare, torture, and kill them, but god forbid he figures out scavenging or farming for food. Sure, Piglet munches down on some people, but only after tying them up or fighting them. A home invasion slasher movie. Villains in proverbial "Cabin in the Woods" movies can be basically anything- killers, monsters, aliens, animals, cannibals, demons, witches, gods, the Devil, viruses, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, mistaken perceptions, oneself, children, mental instability, Nazis, Kathy Bates- see what I'm saying? It was always going to be a cabin in the woods movie because it's set in the Hundred Acre Wood. That didn't mean it had to be a slasher.

Perhaps the filmmakers thought how serious it was would be funny enough on its own; it shouldn’t have been hard to make this satire. But if that was what this movie was going for, it didn’t land for me. There just wasn't much use of the source material. That was honestly the most frustrating thing. I kept waiting, and the Winnie the Pooh of it all never made an appearance. Why didn't he get caught in a window? Why wasn't he gulping down human blood from a honey jar, the label 'honey' crossed out for 'human?' Why couldn't he like, I don't know, control bees or something? Piglet turning into just a wild boar would have done it for him. Imagine Pooh and his pet Piglet on a leash. Hilarious, weird, a joke on how attached Piglet is to Pooh. The things that could have been!

Still, there were plenty of kills with plenty of blood, which was a saving grace. They had decent enough effects and were all pretty unique. Some of them are right gnarly, and that's always a plus for a horror movie. While many of the kills did make me laugh, just having the killers be Pooh and Piglet wasn’t quite enough. It was a constant string of asking 'what?' because there was just zero connection to Milne's works. They didn't talk so there were no zingy one-liners or tongue-in-cheek references. It was played too much like a straight slasher movie. Again: why a slasher and not a monster movie? Crush my dreams, why don’t you. I think it wanted to be satire, but where were the references? Where were the jokes? Where was the camp? Where was the hightened reality? I kept rolling my eyes: 'That's guy's not Winnie the Pooh,' 'What does this have to do with Winnie the Pooh?' There was no Pooh or Piglet about them, they were just dudes in masks. It's just a mask. It's just a mask!

They could have been switched for the guys from You're Next (2011) and I don’t think you would have needed to change a thing. The killers in You're Next even wear animal masks. So what's the point of having it be a Pooh property? There was no reason for them be from the Hundred Acre Wood other than to say they were. It felt like first-time writer/director/editor/producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield had written a slasher movie, then once Winnie the Pooh entered public domain he just tossed them in without changing anything. He also maybe took on too many jobs for this movie.

There's low budget, and then there's doing four different jobs yourself. Outside opinions and suggestions are essential to movie making. Producers think about what will attract audiences and money. Editors have an additional artistic eye and the conversations between they and the director almost always make for better movies. Quentin Tarantino used editor Sally Menke in every one of his movies until her passing because she got it. The original Star Wars trilogy was probably saved by George's then wife and editor Marcia Lucas if the post-divorce prequel trilogy is anything to go by. (Please don't come for me Star Wars fans.)

These were collaborations. A director needs outside opinions. Needs more than one pair of eyes looking at the final product. That goes double if they are also the writer. Killing your darlings is hard if no one is telling a writer where their own story is lacking. It's good to have a singular vision, but movies by nature are a cooperative work. So where was the behind-the-camera cooperation?

And just a little thing: it's the Hundred Acre Wood, singular. Not the Hundred Acre Woods, plural. Steam is coming out of my ears. Stuff like that kills me dead, because it makes it seem like no one even cared enough to check the name. And if they did, they didn't care enough to make it right. Why make it Winnie the Pooh at all? What's the point if you aren't going to pay attention to the details?

Despite my dislike, I truly hope Rhys Frake-Waterfield keeps making movies. It’s clearly something he wants and loves to do. I just think in ten years he’ll look back on this movie and cringe. Because it was cringe-worthy. I don’t enjoy disliking movies like this because the people who make horror tend to be very passionate about it.

I wanted this movie to be good, or at least a funny, entertaining bit of trash horror. I really wanted it to work. For a wide array of movies, people go in expecting it to be good. With most horror, however, people go in expecting it to be bad. See the difference? I try hard to give every horror movie I see the benefit of the doubt: sure it looks bad, but until it comes out I’m assuming it’s good. Because you never know!

Then I found out whether this movie was a good one, a so-bad-it’s-good one, or a bad one.

This movie was bad. For me it wasn’t even so-bad-it’s-good. The heartbreak of it all. I’m sure there’s more to be said, but I’m just sick and tired of even thinking about it; I this movie was that much of a let down. Not for me. I’m angry over it, frustrated, and a little bit baffled. How did this happen? I grew up with Pooh and friends, like many of us did, and I think we deserved a better horror movie about them than this one. I just kept asking why. Why, why, why.

How to even end this write-up? I didn't even mention how bored I was for the duration, either. Eye-rolling. It just stunk. It was hardly good for a laugh, there was no point to it being Winnie the Pooh, no references, no satire, no camp, no fun, no point of view, no nothing. It was a big fat wad of nothing. The idea was so wasted on this movie it felt like it wasn't used at all. Honestly it might have been better if it had just been two regular-degular killers. This movie was so disappointing and I disliked it so much I'm going to be a bit mean: Rhys Frake-Waterfield should be embarrassed. I would be. He just didn't seem to know how to use the characters.

Am I being a bit harsh? I don’t know, probably. But it just didn’t do it for me. Should I tell you to check it out? I don’t know. Maybe stoned? But I was stoned so what does that mean? Perhaps it was so not my taste that I’m missing something. I hope there are people out there who totally love this movie. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

I'd give this a zero if I didn't believe in my self-imposed rules about rating on one to five. To that note, in my book Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) gets an obvious 1/5.

#Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey #Blood and Honey #horror #spook study #movies #film #review #movie review #my writing #long posts about horror #1/5 #Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey

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legion1227 · 6 months

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Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey Movie Review

This is a terrible usage of the Winnie The Pooh IP since it became public domain.

On the first day of 2022, Winnie-The-Pooh, the brand and character held tightly by Disney for years, became public domain, meaning that Pooh Bear and his pals can be used in creative endeavors that aren't protected by property laws, including copyrights, trademarks, and patents. After 95 years since the story was first published, creatives outside of Disney could have the opportunity to craft something truly unique and different from one of the largest corporate media conglomerates in the world.

At the first chance to leave an impression, Jagged Edge Productions decides to make a horror film devoid of love, passion, and beyond dull.

In narration, we are told that a young Christopher Robin meets and befriends in the Hundred Acre Woods, Winnie-The-POoh, Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, and Eeyore. They form a bond, but then Christopher Robin leaves them to go to college. Without him around to help feed and keep them company as winter rages, the gang starves and develops a hatred for humanity. They vow never to speak again and go completely feral. Years later, Christopher Robin returns with his wife Mary, but both are ambushed by Pooh and Piglet. Piglet strangles Mary fatally, and the duo holds Christopher hostage. Then, university students come to rent a cabin in the Hundred Acre Wood and are picked off one by one by Pooh and Piglet.

The beginning has some intriguing artwork to accompany the narration as we are told the backstory. And the blood and gore are impressive in some deaths. That is as far as I'm willing to go for giving compliments to the film.

Blood and Honey establishes early that Pooh and the gang are creatures and that they had to eat Eeyore so they could survive. Weirdly enough, Rabbit and Owl are suspiciously missing throughout the entirety of the movie. There's no explanation as to why they're not referenced. They're just…absent. Nobody mentions them at all or anything, it's Pooh and Piglet the whole time causing terror.

And they look awful. They don't look like creatures. Their designs make Pooh and Piglet blatantly look like people wearing semi-realistic suits that terrorize this bland and forgettable group of girls.

I don't remember a single thing about the human characters, name or otherwise, as each one is less interesting than the last. If Pooh and Piglet were maybe intriguing in the slightest maybe I would be more forgiving but everyone sucks in this movie. The performances are poor, the dialogue is uninspired, the cinematography is lacking, and it's such a bland movie to look at besides maybe /some/ of the death scenes and some of the beginning?

I knew going into this that Blood and Honey would be bad, but I was hoping for something so bad it's funny territory to chart here. Look, the idea that you wanna take some of the most wholesome literary characters and turn them into brutal monsters is not an idea you can take earnestly unless you come at the subject matter in an incredibly careful, more tasteful manner. They clearly don't do that, but you could, at least, inject some humor into the film and subject matter. But that happens not in the slightest, either. I appreciate how short the movie is, but it is still a tedious, dreary, weak film and easily one of the worst films I've had the displeasure to watch in 2023. There's no reason to check out the film besides some gorey bits here and there. Hopefully, we get more intriguing features in the future with Pooh Bear and the gang because, with everyone in the public domain, there has to be something more substantial and fascinating to work with and craft than this. 1/5.

#review #movie review #movies #winnie the pooh #winnie the pooh blood and honey #disney #piglet #pooh bear

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