Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey – Film Review

The days of adventures and merriment have come to an end, as Christopher Robin, now a young man, has left Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet to fend for themselves. As time passes, feeling angry and abandoned, the two become feral. After getting a taste for blood, Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet set off to find a new source of food. It’s not long before their bloody rampage begins.

It genuinely feels so surreal that we’re living in a world in which we are now getting a horror movie based on the iconic children’s character Winnie-the-Pooh. If you were to tell me as a young child that this was going to be a reality one day, I probably would’ve laughed right in your face and told you you were crazy. But, alas, here we are…

The Winnie-the-Pooh character has always been near and dear to my heart as a kid so seeing him in a horror film slashing people up feels kind of weird but it certainly wasn’t the worst experience in the world. As a matter of fact, there is a decent amount of fun to be had in Rhys Frake-Waterfield‘s Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey even though it’s, overall, not too great.

It’s a film that genuinely hopes you love the kills and the overall concept of the movie because if you don’t like either, then you’re probably going to be checking your watch every other minute praying that the film is over soon. Aside from those two elements, the film doesn’t offer viewers a whole lot of substance.

To be honest with you, the plotline of this film is actually kind of terrible. It’s basically just about Winnie-the-Pooh and company getting angry because Christopher Robin has grown up and gone to college so they’re, in turn, furious. How do they take out their anger? By killing people.

It’s an absolutely ridiculous plot that never gets explored too deeply and sadly, the film takes itself deathly seriously for whatever reason. There should have been some moments in which we got to see a bit of Robin’s life with these animals as a young boy but we’re only ever told about them. This would have easily made some of the later scenes feel a lot more emotional.

The kills here are easily the best thing about the entire movie. Some of them are legitimately impressive, with one scene in the third act in particular seriously surprising me with how good and brutal it looked. Sadly, these kills are so few and far between and I left the film wanting a whole lot more of them.

There’s a lot wrong with this movie but at the end of the day, I can genuinely tell that the director and the rest of the cast and crew seriously tried their best with this project. They didn’t throw this together last minute in the hopes that people would rush out to see it.

Sure, there are a lot of things that they could have done a whole lot better here, but they still made a hugely respectable effort and even though it wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever seen, it’s certainly not the worst. I’m definitely up for more horror retellings of children’s stories.

Impressive kills and great atmosphere are sadly not enough to save Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey from being a majorly generic and sloppily written misfire that doesn’t manage to utilize its crazy concept to its fullest potential.