I don’t know what I was expecting from “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.” I didn’t think it would be good, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be openly mean-spirited, oversexualzied and almost malicious towards its audience.
The film comes as a result of A. A. Milne’s 1926 book entering the public domain. Now, anyone can make and sell their own works of fiction based on “Winnie the Pooh,” and of course one of the highest-profile projects was this abominable horror film.
It follows Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon), who is now an adult, and is trying to visit Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and friends at the Hundred Acre Wood. Robin abandoned them to go off to college, and in order to survive a tough winter, they cannibalized Eeyore. This made them twisted and evil and led to them hating humans, whom they now feast upon.
To clarify, when I say “they,” I mean just Pooh and Piglet (Chris Cordell). The remaining “Winnie the Pooh” friends — Owl and Rabbit — are missing from the film without explanation. Are they dead or did they escape? The film clearly doesn’t care, so neither should you.
Pooh and Piglet capture Robin and kill and eat his fiancee, Mary (Paula Coiz). In Robin’s place, we later meet a group of expendable university students that are vacationing near the Hundred Acre Wood, who are only in the film to be killed off.
This film is grotesque and disturbing, but not in the ways that make for a good horror film. The horror elements here are terrible — Pooh looks like a large man running around awkwardly in a rubber suit, whereas Piglet is basically a guy in a “Spirit Halloween” mask. But its violence towards its mostly female cast is both disrespectful, misogynistic and over the top.
Case and point: There’s a scene where Pooh rips off one of the student’s bras — rendering her top half fully nude — before throwing her into a wood chipper. Who thought that was appropriate for what, at its best, is a film about a man in a funny rubber suit killing people?
Its sexual content both comes out of left field and is extremely uncomfortable, as is its violence towards women. Graphic kill scenes are par for the course for horror, but director-writer Rhys Frake-Waterfield only has a few of those, choosing instead to have Pooh and Piglet slap the students — often in the face — in scenes that resemble more of incidents of domestic violence than a corny horror film.
To make matters worse, when the film isn’t making these inappropriate creative decisions, it is actively boring. There are entire scenes where Pooh and Piglet are looming — essentially doing nothing — in order for Frake-Waterfield to artificially extend the runtime.
This film has no redeeming qualities. Its premise, while weak, could have made for a fun B-movie. However, its execution is entirely repulsive — a complete bastardization of Milne’s iconic and heartwarming character.
“Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” might be the worst film I have ever watched. It is completely unfit for human consumption. If every last copy of this film was thrown in a pit and burned, the world would be a better place.
I cannot in good faith award it any stars. It’s vile on every level and is a movie I thoroughly want to scrape from my memory.
“Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” gets a 0/10
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I kind of want to watch this movie just to see how bad it is. The only thing crazier than it existing at all is that someone saw fit to make a sequel.
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