Normally, one might relish a legal victory over Disney, who surely didn’t want Winnie-the-Pooh to enter the public domain, as it did in 2021. But one tends to want to side with the corporate behemoth when the result is unapologetic trashola like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (now streaming on Peacock), which just barely meets the base definition of “feature film.” This as-cheap-as-it-gets horror sludge is from Rhys Frake-Waterfield, whose filmography includes directing and/or producing movies that almost certainly don’t live up to their titles, among them Firenado, Dinosaur Hotel, Croc! and Easter Bunny Massacre: The Bloody Trail. Perhaps a sign of pending apocalypse, or at least a product of the worst of the internet, the trailer for WtP:BaH went viral early in 2023, prompting a worldwide release and a $5 million box office return on a budget that’s reportedly $100,000, but looks like a buck eighty-five. And I would know, because I watched it, regrettably.
The Gist: Once upon a time, there was a boy named Christopher Robin and he befriended some anthropomorphic animals in the 100 Acre Wood. And since everything that ever existed is beholden to the passage of time, Christopher grew up and moved away to college, leaving behind Pooh Bear and Piglet and the other genial creatures – who soon reverted to cannibalism to survive. Sorry, Eeyore, you won’t be in the sequel, because you got brunch’d. And now, adult Christopher (Nikolai Leon) returns to the wood with his wife Mary (Paula Coiz), hoping to introduce her to his old pals. Bad Idea Jeans: all they find is a weird cabin full of ca.-2007-horror-movie taxidermy and antlers, and a bloodstained honey pot. And then Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (Chris Cordell) turn up to render Mary a picked-over skeleton, and take Christopher out back to the barn so they can do Saw or Texas Chainsaw things to him.
It’s worth noting that Pooh and Piglet look like fat guys wearing masks and overalls, for good reason: They’re played by fat guys wearing masks and overalls. And long pants and sleeves, to save money on costumes and prosthetics. Don’t expect Roo or Tigger here today; they’re likely being saved for the sequel, which is already in production. I’d say humanity deserves this if I was cynical, but instead, I’ll be circular and say humanity deserves any gruesome fate that befalls it, merely for producing this.
Where was I? Right – the 100 Acre Woods. A woman named Maria (Maria Taylor) recently suffered a creepy incident with a stalker, and now just wants to get away to a plush remote cottage with her four besties. They drive past a dilapidated gas station, and presumably several dozen ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER signs, since the opening credits are chock full of newspaper headlines about all the disturbing shit that goes on in that wood. Those four besties aren’t worth mentioning, because I couldn’t tell them apart, save for the one who meets her demise while wearing a cleavagey bathing suit. But you can at least participate in the slaughter countdown, because all five of them sure seem doomed to eat shit at the hands of Pooh and/or Piglet. That’s just how these things go, you know.
I’d be scared if it wasn’t funny, but it’s not funny, because it’s just F—ING STUPID.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The last utterly worthless slasher movie I – pardon the phrasing – gutted out was Terrifier 2, which looks like Persona compared to Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.
Performance Worth Watching: Key phrase here: “worth watching.” Let’s just say it’s not a great resume builder for the cast. Next category!
Memorable Dialogue: “Something’s wrong with Piglet – he killed my wife!” – Christopher Robin almost accidentally delivers a funny line
Sex and Skin: Gratuitous female toplessness and cheesecake.
Our Take: I can at least say this about Frake-Waterfield’s work here: He excels at making next-to-nothing look like absolutely nothing. Some directors make the most of their limited budgets via innovation; this guy must’ve spent all his financing on seed money for his Amway sales business. That’s a cheap shot, I know, but “cheap shot” is a literal description of every frame of this grueling, uninspired, derivative, not-shocking, loitering, boring, ineptly edited slopbucket of dead-ass slasher tropes and voidlike characters.
Nary a brain cell seems to have been invested in creature or set design – what we’ve got here is guys in masks with chains around their necks and sledgehammers in their mitts, lurking in the corner of the frame until they corner a poor innocent woman and, for example, make her eyeballs pop out of her skull after lining it up with a car tire and hitting the gas. Is this, dare I ask, at all in line thematically with what Pooh might do? Nope! The willy-nilly-silly bear could’ve immersed them in scalding-hot honey, or tickled them to death after they got stuck trying to climb into a hollow tree, but no. Those are ideas, and this movie doesn’t have any of those.
This isn’t a comedy, it’s a knife-goes-in, guts-come-out killfest that’s cobbled together without a trace of imagination or creativity, and is populated with dimwits for whom logic is a foreign concept, for whom simply running away from the thing that’s trying to kill them is an idea far too complex to grasp. But hey, the concept of beloved children’s-book characters becoming homicidal maniacs is just too subersively delicious to deny, right? Maybe if you’re one of those fatally online people prone to getting swept up in viral dreck. For the rest of us, WtP:BaH is completely forgettable, and seems to have been engineered so critics would use it as a scratching post, and therefore draw more attention. Well here you go, dudes: your movie sucks!
Our Call: SKIP IT. Makes you wish the Supreme Court would repeal its public domain copyright laws.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
