Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 review: the bear necessities for a good time
The Dis-ploitation slasher series returns with a good gimmick, a twisted sense of humor, and a healthy dose of irreverence
Film Reviews Winnie the Pooh
If the original Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey, as the exact same movie, had been made in Italy during the ‘70s, it’s just the sort of film Quentin Tarantino would be hailing as a lost masterpiece today. Frankly, it’s been hilarious watching fellow Gen-X critics, who grew up in the heyday of slasher sequels on VHS, rushing to turn their noses down at this ultra-low-budget gorefest with a gimmick. With time, all horror becomes respectable and Scream Factory deluxe blu-ray worthy, and we’re not talking about Dracula, Frankenstein, or The Exorcist, based on popular novels and acclaimed right out the gate.
Let’s instead talk Saw, initially derided by self-appointed intellectual betters as torture porn for psychopaths, and only 20 years later scoring its first Rotten Tomatoes “fresh” rating for its 10th installment. Look at Eli Roth, condemned as a misanthrope for the Hostel movies and now making family films like The House With A Clock In Its Walls. Troma films, once considered the bottom of the barrel by critical consensus, gave us James Gunn. The Friday The 13th flicks were always exploitative schlock, but because Jason Voorhees has an iconic look we forgive them now. How, exactly, do you shock outside the bounds of acceptability with parents who grew up on all that?
The answer, clearly, is that you punch hard in the childhood. Even the most belligerent cynic who grew up on Winnie the Pooh has a soft spot for him; director Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s goal is to find that spot and kick it with a steel-toed boot. Slasher movies were never meant to be safe for parents, but cheap thrills to entertain adolescents who love seeing things they think they aren’t supposed to. Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 is all that, and everything the grindhouse cult classics that horror fans now revere used to be. As the T-shirt used to say, if it’s too loud, you’re too old. This is cinema at its most punk rock—a raucous, unpolished, cheap, sacred-cow shredding middle finger to the mainstream with just enough raw talent inside to keep it from being dismissable.
It’s true that some punk rock has more to say than just shock, and this isn’t necessarily that brand, but let’s not pretend the movie represents some failure of the system. Slasher exploitation with a good gimmick has always worked, and always will, as long as we keep producing more teens, and some adults who never grow up. (Point your accusatory finger this way, if you wish.)
The original Blood And Honey posited that the familiar childhood friends of Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon, now recast with Scott Chambers in the role) were actually demonic human-animal monstrosities, now fully grown since being abandoned by their childhood friend, and on a murder spree to lure him back. In part two he has escaped the creatures’ clutches, but half the town believes he actually committed their murders, while the other half still searches the woods to see if there be monsters. Meanwhile, hypno-therapy may reveal what Christopher’s subconscious is covering up about his supposedly happy childhood, and the creatures—Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Owl—who looks more like a vulture, but never mind—are getting hungrier.
All a movie like this really needs to do is deliver gory kills. It helps if there’s a twisted sense of humor involved (lumberjack bear-man with a flaming chainsaw—check!), and an insane backstory never hurts. Add to this a little creativity in terms of lighting and staging, plus actors who don’t suck—the gifted yet indiscriminate Simon Callow, costar of Amadeus and Street Fighter, is aboard as a narrator and a key character—and you have a slasher that’s exactly the junk-food high it’s supposed to be. Sure, some of the kills are obscured by darkness and quick cuts, as Frake-Waterfield implies even more deaths than he has the money to show. (Judicious use of animation fills in some other evident budget holes.) Enough of the gross-outs are clear, however, for the makeup and gushing squibs (and Master Of The Flying Guillotine references) to satisfy a reasonable viewer’s blood-thirst.
Frake-Waterfield has a gimmick here he’s obviously content to ride while it lasts, teasing horror versions of Pinocchio, Bambi, and Peter Pan in a shared universe over the end credits, and it’s easy to see how that could become tiresome eventually. However, his use of color and shadow, along with his ability to draw natural performances from a mostly unknown cast (and a spot-on Scottish accent from Callow) suggests he could do more given the chance. If he does get that next-level offer, one hopes both that he runs with it and that some next-generation scrapper will call him a sellout and devise something equally assaultive in response. Every generation needs its disreputable schlocketeers, and if they rise to bigger opportunities, we all win. Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 should relish the boos, and eschew positive notices, as all punk ought. It gets a qualified thumbs up here, anyway.
42 Comments
Once again, for the Americans:Winnie the Pooh is not a Disney creation.
He is as much a Disney creation as Luke Skywalker or Thor.
Exactly. Gotta admit, I’m enjoying watching the Disney Adults absolutely lose it over this mutilation of a “Disney” creation.Hell, if you’re offend by gore in a “Disney” property, don’t read the original Cinderella:Grimm by name, grim by nature.
So many historical children’s stories were straight nightmare fuel, including most adapted by Disney.
Yeah. There’s that Family Guy cutaway gag…That’s not something Seth made up. That’s pretty much Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher (“The Story of the Thumb-Sucker”), an honest-to-Jesus German Bedtime Story, because of course it’s German. And, also, since AVC just got sold to Paste Magazine, I just wanna say it’s been nice chatting to you, bfred if they can comments. I know we didn’t see eye to eye, which was probably my fault, but you’ve always been a real one, mate.
Well shit, first I’ve heard of it. Maybe a good thing, we’ll see.Anyway, die in a fire :)ETA: Only known casualty so far?“One of The A.V. Club’s staffers impacted by the sale announced on X that he’d lost his job. “I’ve just been laid off from G/O Media. I was at The AV Club for 10 years, and it was my dream job for most of that time,” twwriter Sam Barsanti tweeted. “I have nothing else to say right now, but if someone’s looking to hire a writer with more bylines than anyone else in the history of the AVC, LMK.””I love that there’s an embedded typo in this story.
Off-topic, but does anyone know what’s happened to all the comments on Kotaku? Most articles seem to have them removed and/or don’t allow new ones.
Gizmodo seems a bit threadbare too.
Gone zombie, like Deadspin and The Root.The EIC quit after she was directed by Spanfeller et al to publish 50 guides a week, instead of actual news. Juts more of G/O Media running things into the ground.https://aftermath.site/kotaku-eic-resigns-over-new-editorial-edict
Yep, better enjoy the comments here while they last.
I’ve been here since like 2003… there was several getting off points. I almost dipped when A.A. Dowd left. I’m kind of sad/happy that I stuck it to the end of this era.
Tears in the rainWhat’s worse is this is after several Kotaku stories about all the gamer gate 2.0 coverage so all the worst people online are celebrating its demise as a victory against “the woke”.
Oh yeah, it was definitely those idiots and not Spanfeller Spanfellering.
Damn, that sucks. Thanks for the link.
The day before the comments went away on Kotaku i saw the impending change being discussed there. Something to do with a pivot to more guides & less news, mandated by the person who makes such decisions for Gizmodo (Herb something?). The Root did away with their comments entirely a while back as well, but I gathered that was due to an inundation of of racist trolls. I’d bet that comments probably are not gonna last much longer on here either, regardless of why. It’s the long, slow death of an era.
Guess it shouldn’t be a surprise with what happened elsewhere but ugh still sucks. End of an era as you said.
I think that’s right about the Root, which obviously didn’t intend to spend on moderators and blocking IP addresses. Easier (and less expensive) to just throw in the towel. Didn’t help that it had become the most predictable content on the internet, which is a shame because once upon a time I picked up some great perspective on that site.
Herb mandated that it’s no longer a gaming news site but a gaming guide site that needs 50 guides a week. EiC didn’t like this and quit. It kept being brought up in comments and now there’s no more comments.
Who needs 50 guides a week?!
thanks
It’s also a ridiculous number. 50 guides a week, 52 weeks, that’s 2600 guides a year. Are there even that many games to write guides about?
Hopefully this doesnt summon the Eye of Herb. I think the word “Guide” is doing some heavy lifting and most of them are going to be “change this setting” “how to cast a spell” that or just AI scrape other websites.
https://aftermath.site/kotaku-eic-resigns-over-new-editorial-edict
Maybe they’ll start from the beginning and the first thing they publish is a guide for Pong.
My thought exactly – that seems like a practical impossibility with no supporting demand.
Well yeah, but where’s the fun in saying that the filmmakers are giving a good ol’ punk rock middle finger to a stuffy English writer from a century ago?
“This will show people not to make up bedtime stories for their kids about their stuffed animals!”
This is an incredibly stupid comment. The Americans? In what world do Americans think (or are they more likely than others to think) Winnie the Pooh was created by Disney? Are you somehow under the impression that countless Americans didn’t grow up with the Milne stories?
I actually really enjoyed this review- haven’t seen the first one but will give this one a spin.
This post-ironic review has stopped me in my bloody tracks, let me tell you.
Yeah, no to all of this. The original Blood and Honey genuinely sucked, a bog-standard generic slasher movie that thought just putting Pooh and Piglet masks on the killers would be enough to count, and with an unforgivably abrupt “not even trying” ending. It’s great if the sequel improves on that, truly, but let’s not rewrite history in the process.
Exactly. The first was what most of us expected. A cheap gimmicky cash grab with no heart. I suspect this one isn’t going to be much better. 80 schlock horror had heart, which the first one of these didn’t even attempt to have
Yeah, I love a lot of 70s and 80s horror because they may have lacked in acting or basic storytelling coherence but they delivered on things like creative budget creature design and memorable kills. The first movie sucked at all of the above.
Eh, I thought it was ok enough, not really worth the Fathom Events price, but I have seen worse horror movies for sure. And yeah, I’ll still be going to see this one too, can’t resist.
You seem to think we have forgiven bad filmmaking en masse all these years later. Not so. And if I’m honest, one of the worst things to happen to Bad Cinema was the Alamo Drafthouse retro programming, How Did This Get Made-style podcasts, and use of the phrase “so bad it’s good”…because often it is not. It is bad.Now, junk cinema can be different from bad cinema. Most of the examples you give up top have their share of watchable junk, and sure, some that’s just bad. But knowing the difference is important, even in a realm of subjective appreciation.Having said all that: I’m sick of hearing Tarantino talk about cinema.
I came here all ready to trash this movie but then
As the T-shirt used to say, if it’s too loud, you’re too old.
…shit. Well excuse me, time to have a crisis…
how far backwards did you have to bend in order to contort yourself into defending a Z-grade shlock horror film that in any other era would have been churned out by The Asylum alongside Transmorphers and Almighty Thor
This is, in all sincerity, one of the absolute dumbest f**king things ihave ever read. The first few paragraphs and the comparisons contained therein are aggressively stupid, and completely irrelevant.How does a movie Roth directed decades later retroactively alter the quality of Hostel? It doesn’t. What does the f**king Fresh rating of all things for the 10th Saw movie have to do with the quality or merit of the original? Absolutely nothing. And claiming that the first Blood and Honey is no different and no worse than a 70’s Italian slasher (or Friday the 13th) is legitimately one of the dumbest and most clueless things I have ever read. Those Argento, Fulci, Bava, etc movies are hailed as classics because they were genuinely inventive and creative. Argentina had a brilliant use of color, camera angles, music, etc. There isbliterqlly nothing creative or inventive about Blood and Honey.I didn’t think thos site’s reviews could get any worse after hailing Lisa Frankenstein as “stunningly original,” and yet here we are. You managed to somehow write something much dumber than even that absolute farce of a review. In fact, you kanaged to write something much dumber than the overwhelmingly vast majority of reviews that have ever been written. Congrats on confirming that this site can no longer be taken even remotely seriously, and on writing one of the most absolutely clueless and asinine things i have ever read.
I still think Saw was torture porn. The third one was just a straight funhouse of machines that twisted and grinded bones. And they had to drill into his skull or whatever. It wasn’t high art man.
The moment you tried to pitch Eli Roth horror movies as anything other than utter trash is when you lost me. Fuck straight off. He’s trash, his movies are trash, and this movie is, I’m guessing, straight fucking trash.
Reading through the attitude, what you’ve essentially said here is that this is a terrible movie, but you think that’s cool for some reason. Alright, have fun with that?
More critics should try the “if you don’t like the movie, it’s you who sucks, boomer” approach.
just checking into the comments to make sure luke was getting sufficiently nutpunchedyup
“Frankly, it’s been hilarious watching fellow Gen-X critics, who grew up in the heyday of slasher sequels on VHS, rushing to turn their noses down at this ultra-low-budget gorefest with a gimmick”Just because that’s what they kept making for us doesn’t mean a lot of us think those movies are actually good, you know?
Also:Tarantino’s opinions aren’t always right. Appeal to authority is still appeal to authority.
Luke continues his role as AVC’s peerless defender of grim over-the-top violence against women.