Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

• Edited, Produced, Written, and Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield
• January 26, 2023 (Mexico) / March 10, 2023 (United Kingdom)
• A horror reimagining to A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard’s Winnie-the-Pooh books

When Christopher Robin leaves Pooh and Piglet to go to college, they become feral and bloodthirsty murderers bent on revenge against humanity.

Sometimes you know exactly what you are going to get when you watch a movie yet you go in anyway-such as this. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is quite possibly the dumbest, most absurd horror movie I have ever watched. It is done all the extreme cheap-even for the stupid and brainless. And you know something that’s just fine.

There is a weird dichotomy for me when it comes to this. As much as I liked what I saw I can also see how bad it truly is. It transcends the flaws and poor qualities to become the guiltiest of pleasures. It is a genuine cinematic frozen burrito. You crave it, enjoy consuming it, feel bad afterwards, and as time puts distance with the experience crave it again. Just like a frozen burrito.

I will not call it great though I think this could’ve achieved true greatness in its ludicrous premise with a modestly better budget. That is definitely the one thing holding it back. It needed a few bucks (or British pounds) for lighting and maybe better talent.

If anything it harkens back to the 80s with plenty of cheesecake and almost no beef cake along with plenty of dumb. How does it accomplish this? While Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) gets the story rolling, the victims are a bunch of attractive women who came to the middle of nowhere (better known as the Hundred Acre Woods) to help their friend get over a stalking incident because isolation in an area that can get creepy and recently has a history of mysterious disappearances is the way to do that.

Nobody else has ever seen them but Christopher Robin for some reason. They don’t explain how they came to be. There’s no hint of them being some scientific abominations or something supernatural. They just are. Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (Chris Cordell) have gone off the deep end after Christopher Robin went to college and they starved. Not entirely as they ate Eeyore to survive. Truth be told, wouldn’t we all feast on Eeyore if we had no other means of food? Kill the Debbie Downer. No need to have something making you feel worse about your situation. Anyway, he takes his wife to visit them and prove to her that they’re real which is a big mistake.

I really think Christopher Robin should’ve played a much bigger part in this movie than he did. He’s in the opener and in the finale but other than bookending things he is not really part of the story. This is brainless but you still need a reason to watch and Christopher Robin dealing with his crazed friends is more entertaining than self-absorbed hot lesbians getting slaughtered. At least by itself anyway.

The characterization is sloppy at best. Nothing really defines anybody. There’s nothing that really makes anybody different. The only one that stands out is the girl in the hot tub and the reason the girl in the hot tub stands out is she’s the first of the group to get an inkling of what they are going to face. That and she’s in a bathing suit taking selfies.

The most appealing part is watching the children’s story opener converted into a horror movie. I feel a disinterested third-party taking a look this could have improved elements without changing anything. The mind behind this, Rhys Frake-Waterfield, was editor, producer, writer, and director. That is too many hats. It is not bad for what it is but less than it could have been.

Yet as I said I liked it. It’s actually watchable. It is imaginative with its premise even though limited by other things. It is equally good and bad with the good making your eyes stay on the film. The lighting is used to cover the cheapness but so severely that it accidentally highlights how cheap it is. The gore is blood and excessive squishing but not the level of entrails that might be appropriate.

This is a movie aimed squarely at the individual who likes bad horror. This is not particularly sophisticated in any way. From a technical point of view when it comes to the directing and the music it’s good. Those two elements were done by people with real skill. But this isn’t artful horror. It’s meant to be dumb and it is that. 

Is Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey a great horror film? No. It is dumb and trashy but an enjoyable dumb and trashy. I can’t recommend this to everyone but if you like something more in line with so-bad-it’s-good 80s horror then this is for you. Otherwise move on.