Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
Altitude Film DistributionWinnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is not a good movie. It is barely comprehensible, it is obviously rushed, and more than a few plot points are brought up and never touched on again. This is borderline TV movie quality playing on the big screen. But, there's something else going on here. There's a level of craftsmanship and care here that shows that the director, Rhys Waterfield, does care to some degree. It is a fairly well-lit, decently-shot horror movie with a level of grime over it that makes it particularly amusing, especially with such a premise.
On the other hand, far too much of it relies on shock value. Not the shock of Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and his friends murdering innocent civilians, but the gratuitous shock of watching Pooh violently whip Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) for an extended sequence is completely unnecessary. Shock value is not necessarily bad. It should not be viewed as such, but it also should have a purpose within the movie. A film such as Saw, does this very well.
None of this negativity lies at the feet of the actors and actresses because they all do a more than solid enough job with the material they're given. The biggest issue is that the material itself is extremely weak. For example, Robin is supposed to be heartbroken by the loss of his relationship with Pooh and, while the dialogue tells us this, it is not remotely believable to the audience. His only purpose in the film is to be tortured by Pooh and Piglet (Chris Cordell) while given nothing more.
The women of the movie, beginning with Christopher Robin's wife, Paula Coiz playing Mary, are there to be tortured and treated as objects to be killed, as opposed to real people with genuine emotional arcs. They each have exactly one character trait, from Instagram obsessed to supportive BFF, and it could possibly be the most troublesome horror cliché brought over into this film.
It is a difficult movie to recommend to just about anyone, but if you are interested, and the above-mentioned issues don't turn you away, there is a little fun being had here with the premise. Just, unfortunately, not enough to warrant the existence of this as a movie. The understandably small budget is a factor here, but the lack of imagination within that playground is the ultimate killer of this would-be franchise. Let's hope that whatever childhood-killing film this studio pumps out next learns from the mistakes of this one. There's definitely a spark of something here, and it would be nice to see that fulfilled.