Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey

SnarkAI Score: 18/100

tldr:

The reviewer heavily criticizes the film for its poor execution, confusing plot, shallow character development, and lack of closure. While there are a few praised elements, such as some line drawings and moments of dark humor, they are not enough to redeem the overall experience.

Our Scores are generated by SnarkAI's analysis of our reviewer's writing. The tldr sumary is drafted by SnarkAI based on that review. All Images are AI generated based on the reviewers descriptions of scenes.

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Don't bother. If you want bad but fun gratuitous horror give 'X' or 'Don't Fuck In The Woods' a go. They both fall into the so bad it's a good category.

I saw the trailer for this a while back and assumed it was a fan-made joke like the Dora The Explorer live-action Ariel Winters did. But no, someone took Winnie the Pooh entering the public domain and ran with it in all the wrong directions. Instead, they should have taken the crude script they made and had a long and serious conversation with their therapist or priest about why they wanted to make this film.

What makes this worse is there are a small handful of just wonderful moments. To start, there is just a great set of line drawings. Reminiscent of Milne but somehow darker and clearly more disturbed.

First minute of meeting Christopher and Mary and I'm not sure the budget stretched to trained actors.

"It's barely how I remember it" - its been 20 years Christopher. Not much stays the same for two decades.

Mary is incredibly indulgent of what must seem like some fairly deep-seated mental illness from Christopher. He's insisting on introducing her to the bear, pig kangaroo etc he used to speak to as a child. She's like 'Yeah, OK, sounds legit.'

She's also the voice of reason somehow, in the very creepy woods and shacks she's constantly saying 'This is not safe' because its clearly not safe.

Pooh looks weirdly like Shrek, I think it's the grin. Piglet has been on the 'roids.

The cuts to white line drawings on black paper, when things get gruesome,(and they really do for little Christopher Robin) is just perfect.

After the traumatic experience in the woods, Mary's therapist recommends she go on vacation with her friends in a house in the forest. A great idea that definitely won't further the plot.

The smart one (you know she's smart because she wears glasses) insists they all give up their phones even though the redhead hasn't arrived yet. The blond one doesn't want to because of Instagram( because she's the blond one so therefore the superficial one). Man, it's a real timesaver when you just use broad stereotypes instead of characters.

One of the bits they're struggling with is lacking budget, Pooh just looks like an overweight furry. Creepy yes. but also that you could outdistance him at a brisk walk before he ends up gasping for air and sitting down to have a doughnut and milkshake cuddling his waifu pillow.

But he is scary (apparently) and he isn't a furry (because he achieves goals). The poor redhead who got lost on the way to the friend's hangout got fed into a woodchipper by him and she didn't get the dignity of line drawings.I think they ran out of money to pay an illustrator with the first two.

Mary - "I saw footprints in my garden. I thought i imagined it and it was probably nothing" Those are real bits of evidence you could have photographed, plaster moulded and used to prove it wasn't in your head and you were being stalked. Maybe then you therapist wouldn't be 'Hey go hang out in the woods.'

It's pretty graphic when it wants to be. and weirdly so. The story point was they were reverting to their animal nature after Robin let them down, but what animal feeds people into a woodchipper or forces a captive to take a shower in the blood of someone else. Ok, an Orca maybe if it could.

(BTW the captive is Christopher Robin, they've kept him alive for however long its been)

The blond one is in the hot tub on her own drinking and taking 16:9 selfies, its gratuitous and it is just unhinged behaviour from someone on a group holiday with their friends given earlier she was hanging out in her room putting makeup on in her underwear dancing, also alone. She notices Pooh when she's going through the selfies and instead of turning around immediately or freaking out, she zooms in on the picture to get a closer look. 'are you stalking Maria? Whatever and wanders off' she says in a normal-speaking voice to the stalker hiding at the other end of the garden. She knows her friend is being stalked. she knows there's a weirdo in a bear mask watching her as she has a photo of him. Instead of calling the police with the phone she has in her hands or giving the stalker's victim a heads-up about the creep in the carden, she goes back in the hot tub and closes her eyes and chills out. I'm not one to victim blame, but I think on some level she just wanted to be murdered as it was better than spending time with her friends. Peak Introvert.

Pooh can drive a car which isnt very 'return to our animal nature' of him is it? They run her over after tying her up and hitting her with a hammer a bit. Because why the fuck not.

We're indoors again. The gang are all split up for some reason. "Be as quiet as possible?" one says loudly to her girlfriend (who was 100% going to break up with her after this weekend in a rare bit of character development we got earlier) "We need to get over there to the door" she adds unnecessarily and loudly, both of them holding weapons of some description. Then they have various other conversations instead of going out the door and leaving.

Somehow even in the mask the actor playing Piglet looked as annoyed as I felt when the girl just kinda fell into the swimming pool for no reason. He swats at her ineffectively with a chain before getting his trousers wet.

Pooh seems to leak honey. I think they're going for him eating it messily a la the books, but mostly it looks like he dribbles over himself.

Somehow one of the girls them has a gun. Which, not to be all Yankee-Doodle about it, puts then at the advantage as Pooh and Biglet walk slow and have hammers mostly.

They decide to investigate dilapidated barns rather than drive away or call the police or find a secure room with a single entrance and fortify it with their weapons and gun.

There are an extra two people they rescue. One's a complete waste of everyone's time and dies pretty much immediately and has her face eaten once it gets a nice honey glaze (and no, i'm not joking). The other is Christopher Robin who's a bit scarred but strangely buff for a guy who's been tied up and tortured for a while.

One of the brunettes captures Piglet and chains him up and tortures him. Then kills him. but all the time she wasted doing this means Pooh gets her and kills her. Unlike her, he murders when under time pressure. Remember torture is for when you are confident you have time! (Please remember this bit, This girl with a hammer easily killed Piglet by hitting him with the hammer.)

The girls steal four rednecks' car, but they don't need it as they decide to go fight Pooh. Why there are rednecks in the UK(well one is technically a bogan) is unclear. But their anger is up because unlike Pooh they are gentlemen and are offended by Pooh's misogyny. (seriously that's pretty much the reason they decide to murder this stranger. Bear in mind that had a car, they could have just left and unlike us, they don't know Pooh's a serial killer, just that these two girls are scared of him.)

Mock this as I have, the Rembrandt lighting on the British redneck, as he smiles working himself up to fight Pooih, was lovely. The four rednecks wail on Pooh with baseball bats, a tire iron and a bottle. He barely notices. Unlike Piglet earlier who was killed by a single hammer strike to the head.

Did I mention Pooh can summon swarms of bees? Because he can and does. I assume its a perk of being the number one honey customer in 100 Acre Wood.

ugh, one of my least favourite tropes. Someone climbs on the car and they weave about to shake them off rather than doing an emergency stop which would throw them over the top of the car into the road at 90 kph and you can then run them over.

She finally thinks to do it, but somehow knocks herself out and she comes too just in time to see her friend dragged out by Pooh. Goodbye smart one, you did your best.

Ha! he throws the smart one's head at her car window, which is just hilariously dismissive, and she uses the window wipers to get it off. This film is so stupid.

Pooh's about to kill her and drags her out. But surprise! (are you? I wasnt. At all, it was telegraphed for about a mile) The guy who was chained up taking blood showers that they freed chose that exact moment to arrive and hit Pooh with a car!

But it doesnt work. Pooh's fine!

Christopher begs to save the girl. it also doesn't work. Pooh cuts her throat. (It was here i realised maybe this wasnt Mary as they made no comment on seeing each other again) Christopher makes zero effort to staunch the blood flow, instead hugging her and holding his forehead to hers, making this whole thing about him, which is basically what got him into this mess thinking his needs and emotions were more important than anyone else. What a way to find out you are a narcissist eh? Serial murders in front of you and a bit of light torture.

The film then stops. I say stops rather than ends because it doesn't really end, Robin's still on the road weeping and backing away, and Pooh's kinda hacking at the corpse of the girl. There's no closure, just the credits role. Really feels like they ran out of money or battery life on the camera and shrugged assuming no one who made it this far will have noticed there is no actual ending.

The whole film could just as easily have been a Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, (and would have been better for it). The weird conceit they are the animals from 100 Acre Wood gone feral makes so little sense given they're wearing clothes, driving cars and carrying weapons.

p.s. turns out on reading a review, the central brunette getting over a stalker who goes to the friend gathering is Maria not Mary, so is an entirely different person than Mary who goes with Christopher Robin. Maybe some small effort in naming and character creation would have helped me not make that mistake? I'm not editing what I wrote, its too long and if the film-makers can't be bothered with making an effort, why should I?