WINNIE-THE-POOH : BLOOD AND HONEY - Tuesday 14th February 2023.

I saw the R18+ Rated 'WINNIE-THE-POOH : BLOOD AND HONEY' this week, and this British independent fantasy slasher film is Written, Co-Produced, Edited and Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield who has had a busy couple of years Directing his feature length debut in 2022 with 'The Area 51 Incident', then 'The Killing Tree' and 'Firenado' since. He also served as Location Manager and drone pilot on this film too - it seems there's no end to this man's talents! This is a horror retelling based of the beloved children's books by A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard 'Winnie-the-Pooh'. The film saw its World Premier in Mexico at the end of January and went on release in its native UK and other worldwide territories from this week too. A sequel is already in development for a release scheduled for February 2024, and the film has so far grossed US$1.8M from a production budget of under US$100K. Apparently, the characters' rights had been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1966 and while Disney retains exclusive rights to the depictions of these characters from their own franchise, the first Winnie-the-Pooh book went into the public domain on 1st January 2022, and following the lapse of the copyright Rhys Frake-Waterfield began production on this film early that same year. It seems the same is true of the Peter Pan books, with Frake-Waterfield set to Direct 'Peter Pan : Neverland Nightmare' allegedly in production now. 

The film opens up with a rough animated sequence of a young Christopher Robin playing in the Hundred Acre Wood with his friends Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Owl and Eeyore with a narration (voiced by Toby Wynn-Davies) of how as Christopher grew older, he left them behind to go to college and was therefore forced to leave them to fend for themselves. Without Christopher to bring them food and guide them, and with the onset of cold and wet winter months Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Owl became starved and resorted to killing and eating Eeyore in order to sustain themselves. This in turn so traumatised them that they developed a hatred for anything human-kind, and of Christopher too for abandoning them. The group then made a pact to reject their humanity and return to their basic animal instincts, while also vowing to never speak again.

We then fast forward five years and a now young adult Christopher (Nikolai Leon) has graduated from college and has returned to Hundred Acre Wood with his fiancee Mary (Paula Coiz), who is very skeptical of Christopher's claims that he grew up with and played everyday with a bunch of animals. Christopher's intentions are to reunite with his old friends and convince Mary that what he says about them is all true. However, when he finds the place where they once played together, he finds it in a very run down ramshackle state. Mary becomes increasingly ill at ease as they investigate the old tree house and fearful for their safety. Christopher comes across Piglet (Chris Cordell) but before you know it Piglet chokes Mary to death with a heavy chain, and Christopher witnessing this breaks down and attempts to run from the scene but is cornered by Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet who drag him back into the woods.

Later, a group of university students – Maria (Maria Taylor), Jess (Natasha Rose Mills), Alice (Amber Doig-Thorne), Zoe (Danielle Ronald) and Lara (Natasha Tosini) rent a house for the weekend in the Hundred Acre Wood at the suggestion of Maria's therapist so she can forget about her traumatic experiences with a stalker some six months prior. Tina (May Kelly), another of Maria's friends, gets lost on the way to the house and is chased by Pooh into an abandoned saw mill. Pooh finds Tina and repeatedly smashes her face into the lip of a woodchipper and then switches it on and up ends her head first into the device.

Meanwhile, Christopher has been held prisoner by Pooh and in a semi-conscious state is hanging from the ceiling by his arms on a meat hook. When Pooh returns he brutally whips Christopher's bare back with Eeyore's detached tail in retaliation for leaving his former friends to look after themselves. As the evening wears on, Pooh is alerted to the sound of music playing in the distance. He and Piglet investigate and find the house and snatch Lara who is relaxing in a hot tub and taking selfies of herself for her Instagram followers. 

Piglet hog ties Lara and gags her while Pooh drives a car over her head, crushing her skull. Maria and Jess hear her screams and run outside to find Lara's corpse. The pair rush back to the house to warn Alice and Zoe. The group of four are attacked by Pooh and get separated from each other. Piglet also enters the cabin, knocks Alice unconscious, and kills Zoe with a sledgehammer in the lap pool. Maria and Jess watch as Pooh and Piglet carry Alice away and then follow them into the woods to rescue her.

Back at Pooh and Piglet's camp, Maria and Jess free Alice and Christopher, and overhear the cries for help from somewhere nearby. They discover another hostage named Charlene (Danielle Scott), whose husband had already been murdered by Piglet and free her too from her rope restraints. Seeking revenge, Charlene taunts Piglet to kill him, but Pooh subdues her and lets Piglet maul her face to death. Pooh chases Maria and Jess into the woods while Alice remains, ties up Piglet as Charlene had been tied and bludgeons Piglet to death with his own sledgehammer. Hearing Piglet's screams, Pooh runs back to the camp ground, but finds him already dead. Enraged, Pooh confronts Alice with a machete and proceeds to fatally impale her to a tree through her open mouth, leaving her dangling there as she bleeds out. 

Maria and Jess run to a dirt road, where they stop a car driven by four locals – Logan (Richard D. Myers), Tucker (Simon Ellis), John (Jase Rivers), and Colt (Marcus Massey) and frantically ask for help. Despite the men's valiant attempts to take him down using a crow bar, baseball bat and other implements Pooh easily resists their attempts and kills them one by one until Maria tries to run him over with the car. Pooh climbs into and over the car banging on the windscreen from the roof and Maria ends up crashing into a tree, losing consciousness momentarily. Maria comes around, only to witness Pooh holding aloft Jess' decapitated head, which he then hurls at the car's windscreen. 

Pooh then attempts to kill Maria until Christopher appears driving another car and slamming into him crushes Pooh between the two vehicles seemingly killing him. Christopher tries to help Maria, but Pooh comes around and pushes the car away, catches up to them by the side of the road and grabs Maria, preparing to kill her with his knife. Christopher implores Pooh to spare Maria, and vows to spend the rest of his life staying in the Hundred Acre Wood with him. Pooh breaks his vow to not speak to say 'you left' to Christopher, and slices Maria's throat. After Maria slowly bleeds to death, Christopher, realising all hope is gone, flees the woods while Pooh repeatedly stabs her skull.

'Winnie-the-Pooh : Blood and Honey' doesn't leave much to the imagination as the killings, right from the get-go, are front and centre of everything that Pooh and Piglet are now all about, leaving thirteen corpses in their wake (including Piglet) by the time the end credits roll. After the first murderous spree the killings all become mind-numbing as the Director seeks to devise new and inventive ways to off Pooh and Piglet's quarry, but for the most part we've seen it all done before. As the twelve hapless victims who all befall gruesome deaths, it's hard to root for them because they seem to amble headlong into their own fate like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. And as for the dialogue, well this is all a bit too wooden and stilted, and in particular Christopher Robin's who says the same thing in about a dozen different ways, often just repeating himself. I also had to wonder at Pooh's superhuman strength being able to withstand numerous beatings at the hands of the four locals and getting impaled between two cars that surely would have crushed his legs, or pelvis or both - but no, he quickly recovers, pushes the cars away like toys, and goes off to finish off Maria with nary a limp. Credit to Frake-Waterfield for taking a beloved children's story and attempting to create something new and fresh (read gruesome and horrific) with it, but next time around don't leave so many questions unanswered, cover over your plot holes, pay more attention to the dialogue, and give the protagonist's a reason to exist. 

'Winnie-the-Pooh : Blood and Honey' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-