Just the Ticket #124: Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Stuffed with fluff.

Enough time has passed since the Winnie-the-Pooh animated series and the original books by A.A. Milne that Disney's license has lapsed and the source material has entered the public domain (which, along with the last time I had a gaming console, the downfall of physical media outlets, and the deaths of several pillars of my childhood, is one more reminder that I am old and the world sucks). So naturally, someone (namely, writer, director, and producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield) decided that the best way to honor the honey-holic stuffie and his group of mentally and emotionally unstable friends is to turn them into homicidal manimal hybrids.

Which sounds like a cool idea.

On paper.

Enter Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey, a film of the cinematic and toilet-buildup variety, wherein the opening narration gives us some decently concocted lore setup: Christopher Robin was a real boy who befriended and cared for a group of human-animal hybrids (who are clearly just very imposing men wearing rubber animal heads and colored gardening gloves) living in the Hundred Acre Wood (the film has some historical cred in this regard, as it was filmed in the real-life inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood, called Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England). But when Christopher Robin grew up and moved away to start his own life, Pooh, Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, and the rest had no way to fend for themselves when a harsh winter came, forcing them to eat Eeyore and develop a hatred for humanity, especially Christopher Robin.

So, of course, Christopher Robin returns many years later, a grown man with a wife and a semi-successful career as an author, to share his nostalgic memories with his wife. But despite the House On Pooh Corner looking like that one, creepy shed in every horror movie that the dumb people investigate even though they shouldn't, and there's a run-down gas station owned by a guy who looks like the town crazy from every horror movie who gets killed and no one listens to, and there is clearly fly-ridden blood all over the house, and Mary Robin repeatedly begs Christopher to get the both of them out of there, she gets strangled to death by Pooh and Piglet (even though there should be more of them, there was only enough budget for these two costumes in the movie, and they're usually shot in darkness or from the neck down because you can clearly see the actors' mouths inside the rubber heads in the full light shots) while Christopher blubbers and pleads for them to stop. Oh, and there's also that press clipping montage of all the murders and disappearances in the Hundred Acre Wood that gets shown through the opening credits. You'd think that would be a point of warning at any time later in the movie, as it is public record, but no.

Sometime later, we are introduced to the movie's attempt at a final girl: a recovering sexual assault and stalking victim named Maria (a similar name to Christopher Robin's deceased wife because we need a weak attempt at thematic redemption later). Because this is a horror movie and a horror movie needs to happen, Maria and her group of horny, semi-attractive, forgettable, female friends with shallow personalities go on a therapy retreat in the Hundred Acre Wood (though it's predictable, a reveal that Maria's therapist was conspiring with Pooh and Piglet, as she was the one who recommended the retreat, would have been an improvement to the barely-a-plot, as would something I'll mention later)....

And the body count rises! (including a barely-visible death-by-woodchipper, and a woman's head slowly getting crushed by a car, the latter of which was one of the few good effects in the movie, but could have been better executed; puns! The rest of the non-final girls just point and scream until the killers are close enough to turn them to ketchup with a sledgehammer). In between kills, we learn that Christopher Robin is still alive. Which is the worst news any viewer could possibly get. There is ONE scene where he's almost useful near the end, but most of the time, he's just blubbering and pleading for the homicidal, feral man-bear, whom he abandoned to a life of cannibalism, to stop torturing him and remember the good times they had as children.

Getting back to the inevitable murder victims, when there are two women left (Maria and another one whose girlfriend--because lesbian fanservice--was crushed by the car earlier), they encounter a woman whose backstory I only know from skimming the plot on Wikipedia, and she denounces Pooh and Piglet by name, saying they made her into a monster and going after them with a pistol-grip shotgun.

This is that other opportunity, as I mentioned earlier, for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey to have been an interesting movie. Consider that the established lore stands. But the "human-animal hybrid" premise was all in Christopher Robin's imagination, and they were actually what they appear to be on camera: children (or later, adults) in animal costumes. Consider also that they renounced their humanity. Add that to the captive woman seeing her reflection for the first time in who knows how long, that she knows Pooh and Piglet by name, and that she says they made her a monster. It would have been cool if she turned out to be an unmasked Rabbit. Or if Christopher Robin had snapped in captivity and taken over the Pooh fursona after killing the original. Either of these would have been infinitely better than what we got. But according to Wikipedia, the woman is just a random woman whose husband was killed at some point I don't remember seeing, and she ends up as just another slasher victim.

Some decent trope subversion follows as the other female survivor gets a badass moment against Piglet before Pooh hangs her with a classic straight out of the Meyers-Voorhees playbook: a machete through the face that's another effects highlight (but still obviously fake). The third act is the best, and one of the worst, parts of the movie, featuring a Voorhees-inspired four-on-one "fight" between Pooh and the gas station attendant and his buddies, as well as a low-budget T-1000 chase homage. But then Christopher Robin comes in like a badass-ex-machina, pinning Pooh between two cars, and immediately re-fucks everything up.

Remember that thematic redemption I mentioned earlier?

Well, instead of grabbing any of the half-dozen weapons that are within walking distance and using them to make sure Pooh is absolutely. Fucking. Dead, thereby saving another Mary from the same fate as his wife, and walking towards a happy ending with his potential new girlfriend, he hobbles away slowly with Maria, giving man-bear Jason Voorhees more than enough time to wake up, push himself free of several tons of rolling metal, catch up to them, and murder Maria in front of Christopher while he...guess what? That's right! He blubbers and begs Pooh to stop, and then runs away like a pussy.

I don't care if that's cancellable to say. Christopher Robin is a whiny, blubbering, dumbass, bitch-ass pussy who didn't deserve to survive this bargain basement torture-porn slasher wannabe of a movie.

And oh, the ponderous, masculine zygote-sacks the director must have for daring to put a Marvel-esque, "Winnie-the-Pooh will return." stinger at the end of the credits. He actually wants to do a higher budget sequel to this trash! And start a cinematic universe with a Teletubbies movie and Bambi: The Reckoning.

The scariest thing about this is that I would watch all of it.

D-

(Because it had promise and historical cred, and the director is ambitious)

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Ticketmaster,

Wham!

Bam!

Bambi!

Out!