#winnie the pooh: blood and honey | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spook-study · 11 months ago

Text

Public Domain is everything. The all encompassing freedom of Public Domain has never been more clear than in the horror genre. Poe, Lovecraft, Shelley, Verne, Stoker, Leroux- all up for grabs. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones getting the living touch of fear. Horror is bolstered by Public Domain, expanded by it, and it makes for some wild movies. Filmmakers lovingly poking at non-spooky classical literature is how you get fun little things like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016). People wait with bated breath on their tippy toes to lampoon the stories they love by adding a little bloody flair. I can't wait to see what people do with Mickey Mouse. While these movies or books may not always be the best, they’re always worth a smile. But some people just end up bespoiling well known properties with what seems to be very little thought.

And that’s how we get thing like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.

Where do I even begin here. This movie was a mess. First of all, Pooh and Piglet are the only two members of the Hundred Acre Wood who appear. Instant disappointment. Is it too much to ask that we get to see Eeyore go crazy and attack some unsuspecting young folk? You know behind all that ho-hum attitude there's got to be some rage brewing. What about Owl? Terror from above and ambush attacks oh how I wanted for thee. Kanga and a now grown Roo could have had some freaky mother/son crap going on. I mean it's a horror movie that actively corrupts these characters, so why not throw in a little weird anthropomorphic animal incest? Roo always was quite attached to his mother. Rabbit could have been unnaturally fast, a speed killer, nothing but a blur before victims were tugged off the screen to their untimely demise. Plus the munching? Rabbits are munchers. Imagine big Rabbit munch crunching on bones like they were carrots. Gopher could have been a knock-out, huge mounds of earth moving towards someone until he snatched them up like he was a giant worm in Tremors (1980). That's just off the top of my head.

These are things that could have related the characters to their original properties, which the movie doesn't even do for the only two characters from the Hundred Acre Wood that are actually in it.

Tigger. Tigger was not in this movie. I am livid just thinking about it. I don't like to swear too much when I write my silly little spook studies, but honestly what the fuck? What the fuck! He is a tiger! You know, one of the deadliest ambush predators in existence? On average they apparently kill 1800 people every year. He could have been Shere Khan times a thousand. Plus he bounces? That would have been freak city. It just felt like one of Blood and Honey's many missed opportunities. They could have each had one amazing kill apiece, the body count in this movie was certainly high enough for it. Kanga, Roo, Rabbit, Eeyore, and Gopher I can understand not using, even though Roo was always my personal favorite.

No Tigger though? Unfathomable. Tigger got his own movie. I know the full group is big and maybe too much to tackle, but Tigger is such a popular character it felt weird that he wasn't in this. We get Pooh and we get Piglet. Two characters must mean they both must look amazing, though, right?

Wrong. The design for them was bad, plain and simple. It really grinds my gears thinking of all the wasted potential of having Blood and Honey be a Milne property. It could have been so campy and weird and fun and instead we got two guys walking around with masks on. They looked like a couple of friends put together Halloween costumes for 'scary Pooh and Piglet' and splurged on the good masks. The rest of the costuming consists of clothes you might find in your weird uncle's closet. There were no alterations to any part of them below the neck. They had human feet, human hands, and human mannerisms. Pooh is wearing overalls. Piglet is fully dressed as well, but at least his clothing is worn. Pooh's plaid shirt, on the other hand, looks practically brand new. The only clothing Pooh should have been wearing is a tattered red crop top. Piglet should have been naked. I mean how gross would that have been? Naked Piglet, hog out, goring you to death. Now that would have been a good time!

Money was almost definitely the issue. When faced with a movie that was as much of a let down as this one, sometimes it's hard to remember to take those things into account. Less money, less cast, less effects. 'Shoe-string budget' might even be too generous to describe what the cost of this movie. But it isn't necessarily about the money you have, rather where that money goes. I think Tigger should have been budgeted for. Maybe lower the body count, which saves on actor pay, costuming pay, and special effects pay. Keep it to one or two simple locations with minimal travel. With unfathomably small budgets like the one for Blood and Honey, it might have been beneficial to tighten it up even more. Shrink it, contain it, make it more intimate. Blood and Honey felt too big for its britches. Perhaps there should have been more focus on the costuming, makeup, and effects that might have gone into our childhood comfort characters. I'm very passionate about the practical elements in movies, so these designs were totally disappointing to me.

I've spent a lot of time talking about things this movie didn't do, which can be a bit unfair considering the constraints of budget and production. I try my best to take movies as they are presented, but Blood and Honey gave me so little it makes it easy to talk about what might have been. Why not this, why not that. But let's get back into what the movie was.

The story, unfortunately, wasn't strong enough to make up for the lackluster creature designs. In typical Christopher Robin fashion, he eventually grows up and says goodbye to his friends. He had always brought sweets and tea with him, but upon his cessation they can't provide for themselves, go crazy and, for lack of a better term, become cannibalistic. They eat poor Eeyore.

Is it cannibalism if they're eating a member of a different species? Not really, but I think that's probably the best way to describe it. They eat him because they begin to starve.

Pooh, who notoriously scavenges for honey and should be hibernating anyway starves. Rabbit, who has his own garden and would stockpile for winter starves. Gopher would eat roots, Owl would hunt for small prey, both starving. Kangaroos eat mushrooms, among other things, and they both still starve. Piglet is potentially the only ones who would have difficulty providing for himself just because pigs need a rich diet and a lot of food. But in the source material they have a communal table, and even feed Christopher Robin. But there's no gory family meal here; it turns out they cannot live without the food he brought with him. Real animals can and do become food dependent on humans, but these characters are not fully animals. The movie even tells you so, calling them abominations. They have human intellect! They have a community. They built houses. They swing knives and hammers around with deadly intent. But they can't do farming. Seems they can eat ass with the best of them, though.

While we see Eeyore's munched upon skeletal remains, there's no explanation for the rest of the group being missing. Were they eaten, frozen to death, or killed by a hunter? If the movie did tell me I ended up missing it, which was no surprise because guess what? They do not speak! They don't fucking speak! Why isn't killer Pooh "hoo-hoo"-ing? Where were the rumblies in his tumbly before he ate someone? That iconic voice coming out of a huge man-bear as he kills? Come on. I mean it's right there! Honestly I felt like so many issues with this movie could have been solved if they were given dialogue. Every member of the Hundred Acre Wood talks, that's just part of it.

Christopher Robin wasn't just imagining his adventures either. His friends are real. So where was the camp? Beloved early childhood characters turned killers is such a fun idea, so where was the fun? Why did it feel like this movie wanted it to be taken so seriously? It's Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, not Deliverance (1972).

Upon being "abandoned" by Christopher Robin, they grew resentful of humanity and eventually turned into killers of people, not just depressed donkeys. This makes enough sense, except they're active serial killers and have been for what seems like years. They plot, kidnap, and torture with intent and there's a slew of unsolved murders and disappearances in the Hundred Acre Wood. This suggests the Wood is traversed regularly enough to at least find some bodies. So why does anyone go there anymore? How many people have to die for the Wood to be fully canvassed? Why was there a huge mansion right on the edge of it, which our completely forgettable human characters rent?

Given the evidence, it should have been easy enough for law enforcement to find their little encampment, it isn't like it's hidden or invisible. Plenty of characters go there, too, so it isn't only accessible to children. That could have been interesting, if you needed the eyes of a child to get there. Plus, it would have forced the introduction of a character who's representative of the source's target age group, making it easy for the viewer to relate to their younger self- the version that actually watched or read Winnie the Pooh. Everyone in Blood and Honey is a young adult or older.

By far the biggest travesty of all is that Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey isn't a monster movie, it's a slasher movie. Every one of Christopher Robin's friends is an animal, but the filmmakers decided not to make a monster movie. Why even bother with the property, then? Pooh is running around with knives and weapons, doing hand-to-hand combat, drowning people. Folks, he drives a car.

He drives a car.

Insane. Absolutely insane.

I mean what in the hell? They are strange chimeras, amalgamations of human and animal. Blood and Honey leaned so heavily into human that they hardly seemed like animals at all. This also doesn't make much sense within the logic of the movie. Pooh can drive a car and stalks kids with the intention to scare, torture, and kill them, but god forbid he figures out scavenging or farming for food. Sure, Piglet munches down on some people, but only after tying them up or fighting them. A home invasion slasher movie. Villains in proverbial "Cabin in the Woods" movies can be basically anything- killers, monsters, aliens, animals, cannibals, demons, witches, gods, the Devil, viruses, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, mistaken perceptions, oneself, children, mental instability, Nazis, Kathy Bates- see what I'm saying? It was always going to be a cabin in the woods movie because it's set in the Hundred Acre Wood. That didn't mean it had to be a slasher.

Perhaps the filmmakers thought how serious it was would be funny enough on its own; it shouldn’t have been hard to make this satire. But if that was what this movie was going for, it didn’t land for me. There just wasn't much use of the source material. That was honestly the most frustrating thing. I kept waiting, and the Winnie the Pooh of it all never made an appearance. Why didn't he get caught in a window? Why wasn't he gulping down human blood from a honey jar, the label 'honey' crossed out for 'human?' Why couldn't he like, I don't know, control bees or something? Piglet turning into just a wild boar would have done it for him. Imagine Pooh and his pet Piglet on a leash. Hilarious, weird, a joke on how attached Piglet is to Pooh. The things that could have been!

Still, there were plenty of kills with plenty of blood, which was a saving grace. They had decent enough effects and were all pretty unique. Some of them are right gnarly, and that's always a plus for a horror movie. While many of the kills did make me laugh, just having the killers be Pooh and Piglet wasn’t quite enough. It was a constant string of asking 'what?' because there was just zero connection to Milne's works. They didn't talk so there were no zingy one-liners or tongue-in-cheek references. It was played too much like a straight slasher movie. Again: why a slasher and not a monster movie? Crush my dreams, why don’t you. I think it wanted to be satire, but where were the references? Where were the jokes? Where was the camp? Where was the hightened reality? I kept rolling my eyes: 'That's guy's not Winnie the Pooh,' 'What does this have to do with Winnie the Pooh?' There was no Pooh or Piglet about them, they were just dudes in masks. It's just a mask. It's just a mask!

They could have been switched for the guys from You're Next (2011) and I don’t think you would have needed to change a thing. The killers in You're Next even wear animal masks. So what's the point of having it be a Pooh property? There was no reason for them be from the Hundred Acre Wood other than to say they were. It felt like first-time writer/director/editor/producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield had written a slasher movie, then once Winnie the Pooh entered public domain he just tossed them in without changing anything. He also maybe took on too many jobs for this movie.

There's low budget, and then there's doing four different jobs yourself. Outside opinions and suggestions are essential to movie making. Producers think about what will attract audiences and money. Editors have an additional artistic eye and the conversations between they and the director almost always make for better movies. Quentin Tarantino used editor Sally Menke in every one of his movies until her passing because she got it. The original Star Wars trilogy was probably saved by George's then wife and editor Marcia Lucas if the post-divorce prequel trilogy is anything to go by. (Please don't come for me Star Wars fans.)

These were collaborations. A director needs outside opinions. Needs more than one pair of eyes looking at the final product. That goes double if they are also the writer. Killing your darlings is hard if no one is telling a writer where their own story is lacking. It's good to have a singular vision, but movies by nature are a cooperative work. So where was the behind-the-camera cooperation?

And just a little thing: it's the Hundred Acre Wood, singular. Not the Hundred Acre Woods, plural. Steam is coming out of my ears. Stuff like that kills me dead, because it makes it seem like no one even cared enough to check the name. And if they did, they didn't care enough to make it right. Why make it Winnie the Pooh at all? What's the point if you aren't going to pay attention to the details?

Despite my dislike, I truly hope Rhys Frake-Waterfield keeps making movies. It’s clearly something he wants and loves to do. I just think in ten years he’ll look back on this movie and cringe. Because it was cringe-worthy. I don’t enjoy disliking movies like this because the people who make horror tend to be very passionate about it.

I wanted this movie to be good, or at least a funny, entertaining bit of trash horror. I really wanted it to work. For a wide array of movies, people go in expecting it to be good. With most horror, however, people go in expecting it to be bad. See the difference? I try hard to give every horror movie I see the benefit of the doubt: sure it looks bad, but until it comes out I’m assuming it’s good. Because you never know!

Then I found out whether this movie was a good one, a so-bad-it’s-good one, or a bad one.

This movie was bad. For me it wasn’t even so-bad-it’s-good. The heartbreak of it all. I’m sure there’s more to be said, but I’m just sick and tired of even thinking about it; I this movie was that much of a let down. Not for me. I’m angry over it, frustrated, and a little bit baffled. How did this happen? I grew up with Pooh and friends, like many of us did, and I think we deserved a better horror movie about them than this one. I just kept asking why. Why, why, why.

How to even end this write-up? I didn't even mention how bored I was for the duration, either. Eye-rolling. It just stunk. It was hardly good for a laugh, there was no point to it being Winnie the Pooh, no references, no satire, no camp, no fun, no point of view, no nothing. It was a big fat wad of nothing. The idea was so wasted on this movie it felt like it wasn't used at all. Honestly it might have been better if it had just been two regular-degular killers. This movie was so disappointing and I disliked it so much I'm going to be a bit mean: Rhys Frake-Waterfield should be embarrassed. I would be. He just didn't seem to know how to use the characters.

Am I being a bit harsh? I don’t know, probably. But it just didn’t do it for me. Should I tell you to check it out? I don’t know. Maybe stoned? But I was stoned so what does that mean? Perhaps it was so not my taste that I’m missing something. I hope there are people out there who totally love this movie. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

I'd give this a zero if I didn't believe in my self-imposed rules about rating on one to five. To that note, in my book Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) gets an obvious 1/5.

#Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey #Blood and Honey #horror #spook study #movies #film #review #movie review #my writing #long posts about horror #1/5 #Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey

4 notes · View notes