Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

**_When Winnie-the-Pooh goes bad_** After being traumatized by a stalker, a young woman gets away from it all with several friends at a vacation home in 100 Acre Wood, England. Unfortunately, a certain famous pooh bear has gone feral, along with his piglet friend. “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” (2023) is a competently-made English slasher despite only costing $100,000 (I would’ve thought it cost 5-10 times that amount). The first Winnie-the-Pooh book went into the public domain in the USA at the outset of 2022 and so this indie started filming several months later in April. Disney only retains exclusive rights to the depictions of these characters from their own franchise, although they apparently own the copyrights to Tigger, who was originally slated to be in the film. One of the highlights is the cast of females, highlighted by Natasha Tosini (Lara), Amber Doig-Thorne (Alice), Danielle Ronald (Zoe), May Kelly (Tina) and Maria Taylor (Maria). The director needs to learn better how to shoot women (no pun intended), but I suppose he does serviceable enough. Despite being proficiently made, there are some boring or overlong scenes, like the intro involving Christopher Robin. The emptiness of the proceedings can be traced to none of the protagonists being fleshed-out as characters, except Maria, and even she’s not very interesting. So the viewer doesn’t care about them when they start running around screaming. On top of this, peripheral characters are thrown-in out of nowhere, like the redneck guys in the last act (which I didn’t have an issue with, but others did). It's cabin-in-the-woods horror that could be described as “Wrong Turn” set in England, just replacing the mutated hillbillies with the animal characters from Milne’s books. As far as I’m concerned, this is superior to the original 2003 “Wrong Turn” (I’ve only seen one other of those flicks). Because it cost so little to make, it made millions at the box office, which led to a sequel the next year (that’s superior because the writer/director had ten times as much money to work with), as well as a “Piglet” movie in 2025. There’s another “Winnie” sequel in the works. It runs 1 hour, 24 minutes, and was shot in Ashdown Forest, which is 50 miles south of London in the north section of East Sussex. GRADE: B-

#WinnieThePoohBloodAndHoney #MovieReview 🍯🐻🔪 "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" is a horror twist on the beloved Winnie the Pooh characters, offering a dark and unsettling take on the classic story. While I'll do my best to avoid spoilers, expressing my thoughts on this film is challenging given the unsettling content it presents. From the start, the movie sets a grim tone with the disturbing portrayal of Eeyore as a man-eating creature, a jarring departure from the familiar and endearing characters we know. The film takes the characters to grotesque and repulsive extremes, leaving viewers feeling conflicted and saddened by the drastic changes. As the storyline unfolds, the revelation of Piglet and Pooh as serial killers adds an uncomfortable layer to the narrative. The transformation of beloved characters into evil personas, including Rabbit, Owl, and Gopher, leaves the audience bewildered and unsettled. Unfortunately, the storyline falls short, and the acting fails to elevate the film. Watching this on Peacock proved to be a disappointing experience, with missed opportunities to explore a more nuanced approach to the characters. The decision to depict the characters as realistic yet unsettling figures in a bizarre fantasy world adds to the confusion and detracts from the overall viewing experience. In conclusion, "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" misses the mark with its dark and misguided interpretation of the beloved characters. It struggles to find its footing, leaving viewers perplexed and uncomfortable with the drastic departure from the heartwarming tales of the Hundred Acre Wood. 🍯🐻🔪

Now don't judge. You mustn't judge. If you do this will come across as the most atrocious piece of cinema since "Mesa of Lost Women" (1953). "Christopher Robin" (Nikolai Leon) is taking his fiancee back to the wood in which he played with "Pooh", "Piglet", "Eyeore" etc. as a child. What he doesn't appreciate, though, is that in the intervening years things got tough for his erstwhile friends. They couldn't fend for themselves, and were reduced to cannibalism to survive.... Aside from altering the balance of their tiny mids, this also instilled in "Pooh" and "Piglet" a grim and determined need for vengeance. What now ensues is hilarious. What ever budget there was must have been spent on gin for the cast: the costumes and lighting are pretty dreadful and the script - well that is almost as bad as the acting. Leon is quite easy on the eye, but the sight of him being whipped to within an inch of his life with the tail of "Eyeore" by a large man in an ill-fitting yellow bear suit whose mouth was oozing honey like a drooling bairn just has to be seen. Cinema can be too earnest and worthy at times, and I think this is the perfect recalibration for that - it is certainly neither, nor is it a film you will ever (want to) remember after you've seen it. Still, the cinema was packed and there was laughter a-plenty throughout the eighty minutes or so this risible drivel lasted. It could easily be a school project - nothing here is of an higher standard, and it did make me squirm at times as the 1970s "Doctor Who" special effects department came back to life - but I didn't hate it.