Adrian Relph, Bambi, Bambi: The Reckoning, Catherine Adams, Dan Allen, horror, Joseph Greenwood, Luke Cavendish, movies, Nicola Wright, reviews, Roxanne McKee, Russell Geoffrey Banks, Samira Mighty
July 25, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Dan Allen
Culture Representation: Taking place in January 2024, in an unnamed city in the United Kingdom, the horror film “Bambi: The Reckoning” (based very loosely on the children’s novel “Bambi, A Life in the Woods”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with two black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: In a remote wooded area, a giant monster deer named Bambi and other killer animals hunt and kill humans.
Culture Audience: “Bambi: The Reckoning” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of horror movies that are based on characters from children’s entertainment.
“Bambi: The Reckoning” is a jumble of disjointed ideas, plot holes, and predictable “killer animals on the loose” scares that add up to a subpar horror movie. Many of the humans in this story have less intelligence than the animals. Even though the movie attempts to be more than just a monster slasher film, by having messaging about the consequences of animal cruelty and environmental pollution, “Bambi: The Reckoning” introduces mishandled plot points that bring up several questions that are never answered.
Directed by Dan Allen and written by Rhys Warrington, “Bambi: The Reckoning” is one in a series of Twisted Childhood Universe films from the British production companies ITN Studios and Jagged Edge Productions. The Twisted Childhood Universe movies have horror villains that are based on children’s entertainment characters that are in the public domain. Previous films in this anthology series are 2023’s “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” 2024’s “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” and 2025’s “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare.”
“Bambi: The Reckoning” (which is based very loosely on Felix Salten’s 1923 children’s novel “Bambi, a Life in the Woods”) begins with a sequence in basic animation, by showing a mother deer and her baby deer in a wooded area somewhere in the United Kingdom. (“Bambi: The Reckoning” was filmed on location in England’s Wilding Wood.) The baby deer has been hit by a vehicle and is bleeding on the ground. When the mother deer approaches her wounded baby, she is killed by a man with a shovel. This surviving deer is supposed to be Bambi.
An untold period of time later, in January 2024, a divorced woman named Xana (played by Roxanne McKee) is pacing impatiently outside a residential street in an unnamed U.K. city. Xana is having an angry phone conversation with her ex-husband Simon (played by Alex Cooke), who was supposed to be there to give a car ride to Xana and their introverted son Benji (played by Tom Mulheron), who’s about 10 or 11 years old, to go to a family reunion with Simon’s family. This reunion will take place in the same remote wooded area where Bambi lives.
Simon backs out of giving this car ride because he says he’s too busy with a work-related matter. And so, Xana and Benji take a taxi instead. On the way to the family house, a giant monster deer named Bambi suddenly appears in the woods and flips over the taxi. “Bambi: The Reckoning” is such a poorly made film, there’s inconsistency in Bambi’s height, which ranges from approximately 10 to 20 feet tall, depending on the scene. The taxi driver, a man named Rob (played by David Ambler), dies almost instantly. However, Xana and Benji manage to escape.
You would think that after this horrific and bizarre experience, Xana and Benji would be in a rush to leave the area as soon as possible to get help. You would think they would want to warn other people in the area that there’s a giant monster deer on the loose, so there could be an evacuation. But no, not in a stupid horror movie like “Bambi: The Reckoning.” Somehow, when Xana and Benji make it to the family home, there’s no urgency for them to escape and warn other people. Xana and Benji just hang out in the house with the other family members.
Of course, in this isolated home, there’s no cell phone signal and no land line. The other family members who are gathered at this remote house in the woods are Simon’s older brother Andrew (played by Russell Geoffrey Banks); Andrew’s obnoxious 15-year-old son Harrison (played by Joseph Greenwood); Andrew’s wife/Harrison’s stepmother Harriet (played by Samira Mighty); Simon’s younger brother Joshua (played by Luke Cavendish); and Mary (played by Nicola Wright), the mother of Simon, Andrew and Joshua.
The character of Mary needed the most explaining, but the movie never bothers to give any explanations about her. Mary appears to have dementia. She frequently stares off into space and only says a few words in the movie. Mary (who, at various times, who seems to be in a trance) is manically making illustrations in a sketchbook that turn out to be drawings of a deer in a forest. (Guess who?)
As an example of how loathsome Harrison is, he throws an object at Mary because he thinks she’s a worthless old woman. Xana is also hard to like because she make incredibly bad decisions as a parent. When she and Benji arrive at the house, Xana is more interested in complaining and whining about Simon breaking his keep his promise to drive her and Benji to the family home instead of getting emergency help because of the monster deer. And then, Joshua suddenly leaves the house without telling anyone where he’s going.
In her trance-like state Mary whispers, “Bambi,” as if this deer can somehow hear her saying Bambi’s name. And maybe Bambi really can hear her, because not long after Joshua has disappeared, Bambi comes crashing through the house’s living room. And that’s when all hell breaks loose, and the ridiculousness gets worse.
Throughout this 81-minute hack-job horror movie, which has long stretches of being absolutely boring, almost nothing is told about the family members except how they are related to each other. Simon works for some type of company that is up to no good, because he has a big, not-very-surprising secret about the company that’s revealed in the story. There’s no explanation for why Mary apparently has a “psychic connection” to Bambi.
Other characters in the movie are four people who work for the same company as Simon: a technician named Jo (played by Catherine Adams) and three hunters named Michael (played by Adrian Relph), Eddie (played by Ewan Borthwick) and Tyler (played by Big Tobz), who are interested in capturing and/or killing certain animals in the woods. And there are some homicidal bunny rabbits in the woods too. Why? Just because.
One of the most laughably bad parts of “Bambi: The Reckoning” is when someone gets the foolish idea to tie Andrew to the back of the family’s camper van and have him dragged as “bait” for Bambi, so that Bambi can be distracted while someone else runs the other way. Xana (who does nothing but look frightened and scream in the van) has underage Benji driving the van. Why? Don’t expect an explanation.
And why didn’t they use this van to try to escape sooner? Don’t expect an answer for that either. It’s one of many asinine things that happen in “Bambi: The Reckoning” that didn’t have to be this nonsensical.
The idea to use Andrew as “Bambi bait” is as disastrous as you already know it will be. When the van stops, and Benji gets out and sees Andrew’s mangled face and dead body, Benji says with absolutely no camp or irony: “Is he okay?”
Viewers might not be okay if they expect “Bambi: The Reckoning” not to treat viewers like dimwits. “Bambi: The Reckoning” stumbles along with a mundane series of chases and killings. The low-budget special effects are adequate. The story is not. A movie this moronic should not take itself as seriously as “Bambi: The Reckoning” does.
There’s really no suspense in how this unimaginative movie shows a rampaging giant deer. And there are two scenes right of out 1993’s “Jurassic Park,” where the monster creature is seen from a side view, as its head gets up within inches in front of the face of a human and stares, with the intention to have the audience wonder if the monster creature is going to kill the human. In “Bambi: The Reckoning,” who will die and who will live is mind-numbingly predictable.
The movie’s acting performances are mediocre-to-terrible, with dialogue that’s even worse. An attempt to tug at viewers’ heartstrings in the movie’s final scene just rings hollow, considering all the terrible stupidity on display for all the previous scenes. The giant monster deer in “Bambi: The Reckoning” likes to do a lot of lethal kicking, but this entire movie is like a lethal kick to viewer expectations that “Bambi: The Reckoning” is a movie worth watching for an entertaining horror story.
Seismic Releasing released “Bambi: The Reckoning” in select U.S. cinemas on July 25, 2025.