'Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2' - Definitely Better, But Is That Saying Much?
Image source: The Movie DB
Writing this as I sit next to my young sons watching the original Winnie the Pooh cartoon
Ever since the first film was announced, people have been morbidly fascinated by the idea of Piglet and Pooh being serial killers. With the copyright of the original story expiring, it opened the door for anybody to do anything they want to with the character. British director Rhys Frake-Waterfield (a filmmaker who had previously directed, of all things, a killer Christmas tree film) took the opportunity, and we got one of the great, iconic horror films of all time.
An instant classic to be studied for generations to come, putting itself in the company of classics like The Exorcist, The Silence of the Lambs, and Halloween, in the category of… films that exist. With a sparkling three percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes to go along with five Golden Raspberry awards including Worst Picture, it’s already been dubbed one of the worst movies ever made. Still, though, it made 5.2 million dollars on a fifty thousand dollar budget. With that kind of profit, a sequel was inevitable. Only time would tell if ten times the budget would result in a film ten times as good.
With the reception of the first one, the only way to go was up, right?
Well… yeah, oddly enough.
RELATED:
The film centers once again around Christopher Robin. He’s trying to recover from the trauma of the first film while trying to live through most people suspecting that he was the one who committed the murders. When his old friends (this time including Tigger and Owl) decide that the time is right for another rampage, they take the fight to the small town of Ashdown. Mayhem ensues.
The film certainly looks a lot better than the previous entry. It has a higher budget, and it shows. While the costumes and makeup of the killer animals look nothing at all like the original characters, As horrible as it looked, the rubber mask from the original did bear (ha) a vague resemblance to Pooh. However, there is a bit of menace to the characters, especially Owl. It can be a bit hard at times to tell Pooh and Tigger apart, and Piglet looks like a cross between a pig and an orc. Still, it’s all a major improvement from the rubber masks of the original.
Image Source: YouTube
The human characters are also improved. Christopher Robin doesn’t spend the whole movie whining and crying, and his relationship with his younger sister is a highlight. Most of the rest of them are just there to be violently slaughtered by the forest creatures, but that’s rather par for the course. I couldn’t tell you any of their names, but I wasn’t completely annoyed by them the whole time. Christopher Robin does have several scenes where he’s trying to remember who kidnapped his twin brother, in scenes that seem ripped directly from the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie. That plot point leads to a revelation that is… really, really, dumb.
The gore is what you’d expect from a film like this. People are dying in horrific ways early and often. It very rarely ever gets to the point where you’re rolling your eyes at it, which is an obvious plus. It’s another example of the film’s higher budget working to its advantage. A lot of the best kill moments come from Tigger, who is sparsely used, but fun when he is.
Image source: JoBlo
A big benefit to this film is that it doesn’t take itself quite as seriously as the first one. It’s still mostly serious, but there are jokes and moments in the film that are trying to be funny that are actually funny. Most of the humorous moments come from, fittingly enough, Tigger, who wasn’t in the original film because his copyright hadn’t expired yet. The humorous moments add a few drops of charm to the film and bring it closer to what we were all hoping the original might be: a movie diving headfirst into a silly premise and milking it for all it was worth. Does this film do that? No, not really, but it has flashes.
The film does suffer from many problems. Like I said before, almost none of the human characters are memorable, so when one of them is killed there isn’t any weight to it. The script seemed to be written like this:
“Which horror cliches would you like in this movie?”
“Yes.”
The overall nature of the creatures (which is highly retconned from the first movie) was certainly… a choice. I don’t know why the filmmakers decided to make that choice, but it did not work at all. I don’t know why they felt the need to try to make it more complex than “they felt abandoned after Christopher Robin left for college and so went feral and kill everyone they see” but they try to add more and it brings the film down quite a bit. Again, several plot and character moments seem to come right out of the FNAF movie.
Overall, though, the film is easily an improvement over the previous entry. The higher budget is reflected on the screen, and they try to give the characters more depth than none at all. It’s stuffed with cliches but is clearly having more fun with itself than the original attempt. Tigger and Owl are nice additions, even though most of the time they try to make Owl’s voice so deep and menacing that you have no idea what he’s saying. A third film is in the works, and Pooh will feature in the upcoming “Poohniverse” crossover film with other characters like Peter Pan and Pinocchio. Time will tell how good the third film will be, but for right now, this one isn’t half bad. It’s no masterpiece, but if you’re a cheesy horror film fan, you could watch worse than this.
Like the original.
Rating: 5/10
READ NEXT:
Latest News
Featured
