Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is an example of a premise that gets your attention before the movie has done anything to earn it. Turning familiar childhood characters into brutal killers is an easy way to generate curiosity. The challenge is doing something interesting enough with the concept that it becomes more than a headline. I don't think the first Blood and Honey gets there.

I don't automatically dislike low-budget horror. Some filmmakers make great movies with very little money by leaning into creative effects or a strong atmosphere. Here, the limitations are often distracting. The costumes look cheap, and the characters don't move or behave in ways that make them particularly convincing as monsters. It's difficult to feel threatened when I'm staring at a stiff mask and thinking about how it was made.

There is no question that the film delivers violence. Some of the kills are nasty, and fans of especially rough slashers may appreciate that. The problem is that the gore doesn't have much around it to keep me invested. The characters feel thin, the tone is relentlessly grimy, and there isn't much of a story beyond people falling victim to Pooh and Piglet.

I also wanted the film to use the source material with a little more imagination. I'm not saying a Pooh slasher needs to be cute, but the concept offers opportunities for dark humor or genuinely clever reversals of the familiar characters. Mostly, it feels like an ordinary backwoods killer movie with recognizable masks. Take away the names and I don't think there would be much to distinguish it from similar films.

I understand the appeal for someone who wants a mean, bloody slasher and doesn't need much characterization. There is room in horror for movies like that. I just think an outrageous idea still needs execution that makes it worth watching.

Blood and Honey is certainly brutal, but it wasn't particularly inventive or entertaining for me. I wanted to see what someone could do with such a strange premise. What I got felt much more interested in shock value than making a memorable movie.

I knew Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey wasn't going to be a normal Pooh story, but I still wasn't prepared for how unpleasant I would find it. I'm fine with a horror movie being silly or even gross when there is something fun about it. This just felt grimy and mean, and I didn't enjoy spending time in that world.

The first thing that bothered me was the way Pooh and Piglet looked. The masks were stiff and cheap-looking, and Pooh didn't even look enough like the character I remembered for the joke to work. I know this wasn't a Disney production, but if you're going to use those characters, the costumes are pretty important. Instead of being frightened, I kept getting distracted by how strange and plastic everything looked.

The story also gets very dark almost immediately. Some of the things in the characters' backstory made me uncomfortable before the slasher part had really started. Once the killings began, it didn't get any more enjoyable. There was plenty of blood, but there weren't enough funny or clever moments to balance it out.

What I wanted was something that would give me a little recognition of the characters, even while doing something ridiculous with them. There weren't many references that made me smile. It mostly seemed like people were being chased by ugly killers with familiar names. I didn't care enough about the characters to feel invested, and I wasn't having fun watching the attacks.

I understand that some horror fans want the brutal kills and nothing else. That's not what I look for, though. I want somebody to root for, a story I can follow, or at least a few moments that make me laugh. This movie didn't give me enough of any of those things.

By the end, I was ready to be finished with this version of Pooh and Piglet. I don't need a childhood character to stay sweet forever, but turning one into a slasher villain isn't automatically entertaining. You still have to make a good movie. This one didn't work for me.