Review: ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,’ starring Scott Chambers, Tallulah Evans, Ryan Oliva, Teresa Banham, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Alec Newman and Simon Callow

March 29, 2024

by Carla Hay

Ryan Oliva in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” (Photo courtesy of Fathom Events)

“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2”

Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Culture Representation: Taking place in England, the horror film “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” (which has warped versions of characters in A.A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” book) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class and the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Serial-killing mutant bear Winnie-the-Pooh and his murderous animal allies continue to hunt down Christopher Robin out of revenge for the broken childhood friendship between Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher. 

Culture Audience: “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” and other stupid horror movies.

Lewis Santer in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” (Photo courtesy of Fathom Events)

“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” was one of the most atrocious movies of 2023. “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” has noticeable improvements. However, a larger budget, a new cast, and a more detailed screenplay do not turn this sequel into a well-made or coherent horror movie. The plot twists are idiotic, and the kills are still very misogynistic. For all of the effort put into giving backstories to the main characters, “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” just devolves into a mindless slasher flick where women get the most sadistic murders.

Rhys Frake-Waterfield directed “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” and “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” featuring characters from A.A. Milne’s 1926 “Winnie the Pooh” book. Jagged Edge Productions, the company behind these tacky horror movies, has announced plans for a Twisted Childhood Universe movie franchise, including a “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble” movie due out in 2025, as well as “Bambi: The Reckoning,” “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare” and “Pinocchio Unstrung.” These characters are now in the public domain, which is why anyone can take these characters and make terrible movies about them. There’s nothing imaginative about having actors dress up as horror-movie versions of these children’s book characters and putting them in a movie where all they do is kill people.

Frake-Waterfield wrote “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” but handed over screenwriting duties for “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” to Matt Leslie. This sequel’s screenplay has development of the movie’s characters, but the second half of the movie gets lazy and just becomes a muddled mess. “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” also has entirely different cast members—most of whom give slightly better performances than the dreadful performances in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.”

And it’s obvious the filmmakers of “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” had more production money to spend on this sequel. The number of people in the cast is much larger in this sequel. The movie’s production design and monster imaging are better than in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.” The cheap monster masks have been replaced by makeup and other prosthetics that actually look professionally done.

But all of these improvements ultimately can’t erase the biggest problems in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” that stink up the movie: It’s still a poorly made film with a weak and incoherent story. In “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” mutant bear Winnie-the-Pooh (also known as Pooh) still wants to get revenge on his former childhood friend Christopher Robin, because Pooh thinks that Chistopher abandoned Winnie-the-Pooh when Christopher moved away. When they were children, Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher would spend time in Hundred Acre Wood, a remote wooded area in Ashdown, England.

In “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” Christopher (who is in his 20s) was barely in the movie when Pooh and his friend Piglet went on a murderous rampage, mostly against some young women who were staying at a guest house at Hundred Acre Wood. In “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” voiceover narration and an animated sequence explain in the beginning of the film that Christopher Robin (played as an adult by Scott Chambers) has been suspected by many people in Ashdown of causing the massacre that happened in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.” They think Christopher had something do with the murders because he is the only known survivor. Some people don’t believe Christopher’s witness statements about who committed the murders, so he has become an outcast in Ashdown.

Viewers soon find out that Winnie-the-Pooh (played by Ryan Oliva) and Piglet (played by Eddie MacKenzie) have been joined by two other killers on this vendetta: Owl (played by Marcus Massey) and Tigger (played by Lewis Santer), who do the most talking out of all of four of these serial killers. Winnie-the-Pooh was mute in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” but he occasionally utters some forgettable menacing words in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2.”

Christopher is a pariah to many people in Ashdown, but he has complete and unwavering support from his girlfriend Lexy (played by Tallulah Evans) and his family members: father Alan Robin (played by Alec Newman), mother Daphne Robin (played by Nicola Wright) and sister Helen “Bunny” Robin (played by Thea Evans), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. Whenever a stereotypical horror movie has a protagonist who’s the target of a serial killer, and the protagonist has family member who’s a child, you can almost do a countdown in the movie to when the child is kidnapped by the killer.

Some other people who believe Christopher are residents of Ashdown who want to find the real killers. Some of these people have become vigilantes who go into the woods with guns because they think the local police are incompetent. These vigilantes will soon have another reason to go hunting for the murderers when the killers strike again.

Near the beginning of the movie, three young women named Mia (played by Kelly Rian Sanson), Jamie (played by Lila Lasso) and Alice (played by Tosin Thompson) are camping at Hundred Acre Wood and doing a seance in their camper vehicle. And you know what that means: Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet and Owl emerge from their lair and brutally murder all three of the women. Owl snarls at one of the victims: “Who’s the abomination now?”

Christopher has completed his medical training, so he has gotten a job as a medical doctor at a hospital. However, the recent murders have placed him under more of a cloud of suspicion. He gets fired because several people in the community don’t want him working at the hospital. It’s one of many reasons why Christopher decides to get revenge on Winnie-the-Pooh and Pooh’s cronies.

Meanwhile, there are some unimaginative scenes involving Lexy babysitting a bratty kid named Freddie (played by Flynn Gray), who has a fascination with movie serial killers. Freddie wears a hockey mask like Jason Voorhees in the “Friday the 13th” series and a sweater that’s identical to the sweater worn by Freddy Krueger in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series. The scenes with Lexy and Freddie are essentially ripoffs of what’s in the first “Halloween” movie.

There’s a bit of meta-referencing when it’s mentioned that the massacre has been made into a movie. When the movie about the massacre is shown on TV while Lexy is babysitting Freddie, what’s shown on the TV screen is a scene from “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.” Freddie asks Lexy while the movie plays on TV: “Isn’t that your boyfriend?” Lexy looks annoyed and disgusted and says no. It might be this sequel’s way of poking fun at its predecessor, but it will just remind viewers who saw “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” how abysmal it is.

And because “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” keeps regurgitating clichés, there’s a large section of the movie where a lot of young people are gathered in one place, which will make them easy targets for a massacre. Christopher has been invited to a Halloween party for young adults, with the party taking place at a warehouse. Guess who else is going to show up at the party?

Various characters go in and out of the story and are only in the movie for exactly the reason why certain characters are in slasher flicks. Mary Darling (played by Teresa Banham) is Christopher’s therapist, who puts him through hypnotherapy to recover his childhood memories. Christopher’s friend Finn (played by Flynn Matthews) is one of the people at the Halloween party. Cara (played by Nichaela Farrell) is the host of the Halloween party.

When Christopher isn’t moping around, he tries to find out why Winnie-the-Pooh became a monster. He does an Internet search and finds out about a scientist named Dr. Arthur Gallup (played by Toby Wynn-Davies, who is also the movie’s voiceover narrator), which then leads to a meeting with a creepy elderly man named Cavendish (played by Simon Callow), who provides a lot of answers about Winnie-the-Pooh’s monstrous origins. Cavendish’s story isn’t too surprising, especially when “regeneration abilities” are mentioned. In other words, don’t expect any villains’ deaths in the movie to be final. A mid-credits scene in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” confirms that these villains can’t really be killed.

In addition to having ridiculous action scenes (characters suddenly show up out of nowhere and are instantly able to find people in the dark woods), “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” has a very sloppily conceived “reveal” toward the end of the film. This “reveal” tries to be shocking, but it actually contradicts the original story presented about Christopher and Winnie-the-Pooh in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.” There are flashbacks to an underage Christopher (played by Mason Gold) and an underage Winnie-the-Pooh (played by Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) that raise questions that the movie either doesn’t answer or deliberately bungles by throwing in this “reveal.”

And the movie can’t answer the most basic question of all: Christopher isn’t that hard to find, so why does it take so long for the villains to go after him? There would be no “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” movies if that question was answered, because the vast majority of “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” movies are insipid filler scenes.

There is no clever irony or entertaining campiness to “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” which has villains that are shallow and uninteresting. Even if a horror movie skimps on background information for the main characters, the movie fails if the villains of the story are just hollow and boring characters. And in that respect, “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” just like its predecessor, is a dismal failure as a horror movie.

Fathom Events released “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” in U.S. cinemas for a limited engagement on March 26, March 27, and March 28, 2024.

Review: ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,’ starring Craig David Dowsett, Chris Cordell, Maria Taylor and Nikolai Leon

February 25, 2023

by Carla Hay

Craig David Dowsett in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” (Photo courtesy of Fathom Events)

“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey”

Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional Hundred Acre Wood in England, the horror film “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” (which has warped versions of characters in A.A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” book) a features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: After their human friend Christopher Robin “abandons” them in a remote forest area surrounding Hundred Acre Wood, the monstrous Winnie-the-Pooh and his sidekick Piglet go on a bloody rampage against people who go to Hundred Acre Wood. 

Culture Audience: “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” will appeal primarily to people who might be curious to see a horror version of “Winnie the Pooh,” but the movie is just a bloody and boring mess with no redeeming qualities.

Natasha Tosini, Chris Cordell and Craig David Dowsett in “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” (Photo courtesy of Fathom Events)

“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” is the very definition of bottom-of-the-barrel horror trash. It’s not scary, funny or interesting in any way. It’s just a bloodbath slasher flick that is deeply misogynistic. There could have been so many unique and clever ways to put a horror spin on A.A. Milne’s classic 1926 book “Winnie the Pooh,” but this garbage movie does nothing but show people getting murdered by two silent villains wearing cheap-looking animal masks.

Written and directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” is a perfect example of a ripoff that takes a famous brand name to entice people into watching a movie and offers nothing entertaining in return. The murder scenes look like a dull checklist. And it’s an understatement to say that all the movie’s characters are very stupid. The mindless conversations and bad acting are more painful to watch than some of the killing scenes.

The beginning of “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” shows a series of illustrations resembling what you might see in a children’s book. A narrator explains that in a remote forest area surrounding Hundred Acre Wood, a bear named Winnie the Pooh (also known as Pooh), a pig named Piglet, a donkey named Eeyore and a human boy named Christopher Robin used to be the best of friends. But all that changed years later, when Christopher went away to attend college and “abandoned” the animals to fend for themselves.

Pooh decided that in order to survive, he and Piglet had to consume their dearest friends. And that meant “Eeyore was no more.” Pooh and Piglet “renounced their humanity and returned to their criminalistic roots, swearing never to talk again.” Christopher then became the No. 1 enemy of Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet.

Years later, when Christopher (played by Nikolai Leon) is in his 20s, he returns to Hundred Acre Wood with his fiancée Mary (played by Paula Coiz), who is skeptical that Christopher really had these animals as friends when he was a child. (Frederick Dallaway plays Christopher as a child, in a flashback.) Christopher has taken Mary to the forest to find his former pals and prove to Mary that they exist. And you know what that means: Someone is going to get killed.

In this case, it’s Mary who doesn’t make it out alive, while Christopher is held captive and tortured by Winnie the Pooh (played by Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (played by Chris Cordell), who keep Christopher tied up in a filthy barn. But it wouldn’t be a trashy and sexist horror film if a bunch of nubile women didn’t gather in this remote area to be the obvious next victims of bloody murder, while they are filmed in various states of undress. And these dimwitted characters barely do anything to try to escape from the woods.

The leader of this gullible group is Maria (played by Maria Taylor), who says she has a stalker and she’s been having nightmares. So, of course, the first thing Maria wants to do when she has a stalker and nightmares is go to a remote wooded area, where there’s no place nearby to go for help and cell phone service might not be available. It’s practically a requirement for mindless horror movies.

Maria brings along her pals Jessica (played by Natasha Rose Mills), Alice (played by Amber Doig-Thorne), Lara (played by Natasha Tosini) and Zoe (played by Danielle Ronald). Later, another woman shows up named Tina (played by May Kelly), and her fate is easily predicted. All of these characters are written as very hollow and forgettable.

Lara is the big-breasted “sexpot” of the group, where most of her scenes show her in her underwear, in a bikini or topless. Movie director Frake-Waterfield makes the camera linger on her private parts in voyeuristic ways. It should come as no surprise that Lara is in a hot tub when she encounters Pooh and Piglet, who inflict torture and violence on anyone they see.

Eventually, Maria’s stalker—a decrepit creep named Logan (played by Richard D. Myers)—shows up too. He has three goons with him: Colt (played by Marcus Massey), Tucker (played by Simon Ellis) and John (played by Jase Rivers), who don’t escape the wrath of Pooh and Piglet. However, the violence that the men get in the movie isn’t nearly as sadistic as the violence that the women get. The men in the movie also don’t strip to their underwear or have any naked private parts on display in an exploitative manner.

“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” is so moronic, it tries to make Pooh having honey dripping from his mouth look like it’s supposed to be terrifying. It’s not even amusing. The last scene of this time-wasting junk proves that “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” was just a heinous cash grab that was made so that the filmmakers could get some kind of twisted pleasure from doing a movie showing women getting violently murdered in worse ways than men.

Fathom Events released “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” in select U.S. cinemas, for a limited engagement, from February 15 to March 2, 2023.

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