When the trailer for Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey dropped, there were a lot of justified negative reactions to it. Who wants to see our beloved Winnie The Pooh killing people? Definitely not me. I was very much against this movie. However, I am also someone who loves horror movies, not only the best horror movies of all time, but the bad ones as well.
I love some bad costumes, terrible CGI, and camp being dialed up to a million. One of my favorite genres is '80s horror films because there are a lot of them and many aren’t that great. Therefore, I was willing to give this new film a chance, especially when, after the initial shock of the idea, I didn’t hear anyone talking about it.
I had no clue whether it was bad in a fun way or just bad. I now have my answer and yeah...let’s talk about it.
Warning: Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.
Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey Has A More Interesting Story Than Expected
Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey is not the fun kind of bad horror film that I wanted. However, it’s also not completely terrible. It’s definitely not good, but there are some ideas there that could have been great. For example, I thought the backstory of how Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (Chris Cordell) became evil was very fascinating.
Who doesn’t like a good villain origin story? I also liked the art that was used to tell this story. The origin story of evil Pooh and Piglet was the movie's strength, especially because it had a bit of a Toy Story feel to it with the whole child growing up and abandoning his toys/demon creatures element.
I also liked the idea of Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) and Pooh turning from friends to mortal enemies. Good ideas were there, but then it kind of just all goes downhill after the initial scenes. This is especially true because it doesn’t even stay consistent with what’s revealed at the beginning and what we see. For example, Pooh and Piglet vow to give up their humanity, but then they dress like humans, sleep in a house, still secretly talk, and have petty feuds. Yeah, sounds very human to me.
Can We Talk About Those Costumes…
As stated, I do like bad CGI and terrible costumes. However, these were too bad even for my low standards. My issue with them is that Pooh and Piglet are hybrid human/animal creatures, so I can get past the whole legs, arms and stuff, but the masks look too much like masks and not like animal heads.
I think it would have just been better to say these were serial killers who wore Winnie The Pooh and Piglet masks before slaughtering people. They could have still had a traumatic origin story connected to Christopher Robin, but been psychotic humans instead of hybrid monsters. The masks made it hard for me to take them seriously as hybrid creatures. I just saw them as people wearing masks.
100 Acre Woods Seems Like A Horrible Place To Vacation
I think one of the number one rules to surviving any horror movie is probably don’t go into the woods, especially if there's a janky handwritten sign.
I’ll admit that the actual house that Maria (Maria Taylor) and her friends stay at for their getaway is nice. However, it’s not nice enough to go to such creepy woods. Like seriously, why were so many people going to such a bad location? Did it cost $2 a night to stay there or something?
Also, the disappearances were on the news. All of these people knew this place wasn’t safe, and that apparently women were being targeted since they were most of the victims. I have a limit on how bad I feel for horror movie victims when they make inexcusably dumb choices. Vacationing at the 100 Acre Woods is one of those very stupid choices that starts to make me lose sympathy for the characters.
I Wish They Gave The Female Characters More Personality And Backstories
I didn’t expect some great female empowerment movie with Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey, nor did I expect a fantastic film about female friendships, but I expected the women to be more than just easy targets.
I get that a lot of horror films treat their female characters like sexual objects or secondary characters. I also get that you don’t need to know the dreams and backstories of every potential victim. However, because most of the main characters are women, I expected some badass heroine moments worthy of a potential great horror movie Final Girl.
I thought these women would come together and take out Pooh and Piglet. The film even tricks us into believing this, because Maria’s tragic story of being stalked seems to lay the groundwork for her to reclaim her power and get some justice by stopping them. She was being set up as the final girl, but she died.
I wasn’t even sure what name belongs to what friend until the end of the movie, because they’re treated basically as irrelevant. We also barely learn about their relationships with one another. Yeah, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is not the movie to watch if you want fully-developed female characters.
The Ending Kind Of Made Me Mad
One of my horror movie pet peeves is when the bad guys win. I don’t mind if the survivors think they’ve defeated the monster, and then it’s like nope, he escapes and will be back for the 400th sequel. But, I do mind when everything feels bleak and the villain has won, when there are either no survivors or there seems like there won’t be any.
This tale ends with one survivor: Christopher Robin. However, for all we know, after Pooh finishes further violating an already dead Maria, he finds Christopher and kills him.
Basically, we’re left to accept the fact that Pooh will live on to kill again and he’s indestructible. I would have preferred if Christopher and Maria escaped and made it back to civilization. We then could see the police looking for Pooh’s corpse, and they say his body wasn’t found, or we watch him walk away to return later.
To me, that’s less bleak than them never truly getting the false satisfaction of defeating the villain.
I Would Watch A Sequel
Did I love this movie? No. However, it got me invested in the Pooh and Christopher Robin storyline. I would watch a sequel, which is apparently already in the works, because now I am invested in this Pooh vs. Christopher war. Will he become the Laurie Strode to Pooh's Michael Myers, the Andy to his Chucky, the Clarice to his Hannibal?
I want to know if this will become a lifelong beef!
Other Thoughts
The blood and honey parts were actually disgusting. Here are some of my other thoughts.
- So we know what happened to Eeyore (R.I.P) but what happened to Owl and Tigger?
- If they were really channeling their animal heritage, wouldn’t they only kill and eat when necessary?
- If Christopher Robin returns for a sequel, he needs to wise up. Begging a killer beast not to kill someone is not a good strategy.
- Pooh is annoyingly petty. You chose to eat your friend. Own up to it and stop blaming someone else.
- They couldn’t do it like Yogi Bear and just steal food?
- People in this movie did way too much talking. That’s how half of them got killed. Too much talking, and not enough swinging.
- I hate to be against a woman, but the pool girl kind of deserved it. She sees a psycho in a photo and just goes back to enjoying the pool? Yeah, that’s asking to be murdered in a horror film.
Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey wasn’t one of the upcoming horror movies that I was looking forward to watching, but I respect that it tried something different and creative, even if it didn’t all work. It also got me hooked on Pooh vs. Christopher Robin’s potential movie franchise, so Christopher better not be dead in the sequel.
