IS WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY MORE THAN JUST A BLOODY POOH-FEST?

Oh, bother! We all knew Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was gonna be a stinker, but it’s so bad that it’s not even fun-bad. With a childhood character entering public domain, we now have another lazy horror movie.

After now grown-up Christopher Robin abandons them for college, Pooh and Piglet become feral and blood-thirsty creatures, embarking on a gory rampage with a taste for human blood.

Director: Rhys Frake Waterfield
Cast: Amber Doig-Thorne, Maria Taylor, Natasha Rose Mills, Danielle Ronald, Natasha Tosini, Nikolai Leon, Craig David Dowsett, May Kelly
Writer: Rhys Frake Waterfield
Release Date (Australia): 16 February 2023
Runtime: 84 minutes/1h 24m
Genre: Horror
Country: UK
Language: English

NR (Not Rated)

Winnie the Pooh has finally entered the public domain, just for a talentless film crew with no passion for this project to shoot a clichéd slasher, and bring in those dollars based on the shock value of the popular childhood characters becoming misogynistic, blood-thirsty killers. Writer-director Rhys Frake Waterfield completely wastes the potential of the premise with terrible characters we don’t care about, unnecessary scenes that drag out forever and ever, and the most disappointing CGI kills you’ll see in a horror movie. At the very LEAST, Blood and Honey could’ve just been one of those fun-bad horror movies. But it’s not even to the extent of being so bad that it’s good; even Sharknado did better in that category.

If you care to know about the plot, Pooh and Piglet basically become these feral creatures with a taste for blood after Christopher Robin abandons them for college. Speaking on the positive side of things, the movie begins with an animated sequence in which a narrator keeps us up to date on how Pooh and Piglet have cannibalised their friends and returned to their animal instincts in order to survive after Christopher Robin left them. This opening being made as if it were for a kids’ fairytale film, in addition to a few good shots and some nice lighting (it’s still no Martin Scorsese film) is every compliment I can make about Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which is what scores it one point.

Unfortunately, these small factors are overweighed by huge disappointments or other obvious issues such as horrible acting, underwhelming gore, an atrociously bad script, and blatantly making a profit off of turning a beloved childhood character into a cold-blooded monster, which I think would be absolutely fine if it were done well. There’s a completely useless stalker plot that does nothing for the story, the laughable soundtrack during some kill scenes sounds like music that would be played for clowns during a circus act, and the CGI deaths look unbelievably fake. The Terrifier movies, despite not being horror standouts, use practical gore effects which make them look so much better and end up being way more brutal. Why did Blood and Honey have to dispose its only decent elements like kills in a horrible execution?

A common trait we know plenty of horror movies share in their genetics is the element of characters making bad decisions, but in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, they’re just downright suicidal and completely careless for their own or their friends’ lives. There’s a scene in which Piglet is attacking two of the girls around a pool, and once he attacks one of them, the other girl DELIBERATELY falls/jumps into the pool so it’ll make it easier for Piglet to kill her once he’s killed her friend. What in the actual fuck were they thinking here? Are they asking to die at the hands of these masked murderers? “Ah yes! Scream so that Pooh and Piglet can know where you are!”

The film is way too drawn out just for the sake of being a feature length movie, every character’s IQ falls out of their heads and transforms into a plot hole, and the third act of the film is so goofy that I just couldn’t enjoy it. Blood and Honey overall is just a terrible horror movie with no redeeming qualities, although I can’t promise that you won’t have fun with it. I actually enjoy and have fun with lots of bad horror movies that I’d end up rating solidly, like The Nun, Halloween Kills and the endless Saw sequels. But this movie is not one of them; it’s so appallingly bad that I couldn’t even laugh or just simply have fun with it.

Thank you for reading this page and for more Aussie Boy reviews, visit Aussieboyreviews.com.