Oh, Bother! or The Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Review

As I sat in a surprisingly busy theater at a Violet Crown in Austin, Texas, on a Wednesday night watching a large man in overalls with a flimsy Winnie the Pooh mask butcher a bunch of people in the woods, I thought to myself: “What a movie this could’ve been!” As the film’s increasingly murky visuals eventually got an assist from even murkier audio, I still thought to myself: “What a movie this could’ve been!” And even as I heard a few laughs and snorts from the crowd around me as Pooh drooled honey from his mouth, the persistent thought of “What a movie this could’ve been!” haunted me.

To say the least, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey isn’t a good movie. But “not good” movies does not mean they do not deserve to be seen. Nor does it necessarily mean you won’t have a good time while watching it. But Blood and Honey, whose devious imagination stops almost immediately with its trailer and poster, struggles to draw the enjoyment it promises with its admittedly funny and intriguing set-up. This, of course, being turning A.A. Milne’s lovable children’s story into a blood soaked slasher flick headed by the big bear who hates pants himself. Granted, transforming a beloved child icon into a murderous being isn’t breaking new ground (see examples A, B, and C) but the attempt is always welcomed! Like any good showman, director and writer Rhys Frake-Waterfield, seeing that Milne’s work was now in the public domain, saw an opportunity to get some eyes on his latest film by turning cute ol’ Pooh Bear into a brutal, murderous being. And if the online hype and my rather packed showing of the film was any indication, the ploy worked.

But simply saying “fucked up Winnie the Pooh” and leaning back in your chair waiting for the applause and money to come in isn’t the best way to truly get the most out of a story about a fucked up Winnie the Pooh. You got to believe in that fucked up Winnie the Pooh, man! Sadly, Blood and Honey is content to just ride on the laurels of the idea it posits rather than doing anything actually fun or interesting with it. 

In the film’s first ten minutes — arguably its best — Frake-Waterfield offers a slight, if interesting, take on Pooh and friends. Told through nostalgic doodles and voiced by a lush narrator, Blood and Honey keeps the same story of a kid named Christopher Robin coming across a group of lovable animals (who in this take are actually human-animal hybrids — an idea the film sets up but never really dives into) in a whimsical forest and befriending them. Of course, Christopher Robin fucks it all up by growing up and deciding to go out into the world on his own, leaving his animal pals to pass the time in the woods on their own. As any normal human-animal hybrids would do in that situation when their BFF leaves, they eventually turn on each other and feast on the weaklings of their pack, leaving Pooh and Piglet as the only two survivors and with a newfound hate for humanity. But worry not, Pooh still loves his pot of honey—just this time he takes it with a dash of human.

However, once that interesting intro and setup is out of the way, Blood and Honey decides to take it easy and just shift into your generic slasher flick. With a visual palette drained of any sort of resemblance to the warm dulcet tones found in Pooh’s literary iterations, the film is basking in the non-discernable darkness of shadows that increasingly obscure what the audience can see. We center around a group of disposable friends who are so thin in their personalities they struggle to display even an ounce of the unimaginative stereotypes that’s been written for them. But you know, who needs that in a slasher flick right? At least, we’ve got some kick-ass monsters and gore waiting in the rafters, right? Right?!

Wrong on that too, buckoo. Like I mentioned earlier, Blood and Honey isn’t a disappointment because it lacks characters with depth (though those are always appreciated). The main faults with this film are in its lackadaisical approach to its exploitative and horror characteristics which starts and ends with the film’s villains. Pooh Bear (embodied by Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (Chris Cordell) are more comical than horrific here, mainly due in part to their design, possibly the film’s biggest flaw. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with cheap looking monsters (budgets are hard to come by!) but it’s the lack of imagination for Pooh and Piglet’s looks — which essentially is just some off-brand character masks that could honestly be mistaken for a non-Pooh related monster — that do this movie in. Dowsett and Cordell do what they can in the role, which is mainly just being big as fuck and looking intimidating enough when glimpsed in the background, but the performers hardly get anything to chew on — dialogue or actual people. They’re simply stuck with husks that could be mistaken for any sort of generic masked baddie in any other low-budget horror flick if it wasn’t for the Pooh-based marketing. I mean, Pooh wears pants in this thing! It’s an R-rated horror flick! Let’s live a little, Blood and Honey!

And the gore? Well, it’s here and there I suppose, but for a movie that promises “blood” in the title, Blood and Honey displays its gore and carnage with a sort of “Alright, I guess,” kind of tone. The shadowy cinematography doesn’t help clear up the carnage, either. But even when we get a chance to see some of Pooh and Piglet’s violent shenanigans, they are hardly unique enough to make their kills stand out from anything you’ve seen in any other number of horror flicks. I will say this though, while I hardly cared about any single character in this film (outside of maybe the U.N. of Backwoods Hillbillies that almost become heroes in the film’s final act), Frake-Waterfield, finally, for one moment, gives into his devilish entertainer side by crafting an abrupt yet somewhat shocking ending. It’s not disgusting or anything like that but it gives the film a sort of mean streak as it turns the idea of the “last girl/guy” on its head.

Which brings us back to what a movie this could’ve been. I appreciate Frake-Waterfield and his crew for at least taking a stab with a fun idea but it stings a bit to come out of this movie with a lot more “they should’ve done this” than “that was so cool!” That being said, there’s already a sequel in the works, which is great to see for a low-budget movie to achieve but also, this hopefully allows the filmmakers to feel more comfortable in really sinking their teeth into material that still holds a lot of promise. For now though, the world must settle for Blood and Honey, a film that at least gives the “Christopher Robin needs his ass beat” crowd a nice boost of serotonin. 

1.5/5