Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a 2023 British horror film directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, and the cast includes Craig David Dowsett, Chris Cordell, Amber Doig-Thorne, Nikolai Leon, Maria Taylor, Natasha Rose Mills, and Danielle Ronald.
It is one of the many childhood characters being turned into horror movies and I know what you're thinking, don't I have anything better to watch?
Well yes, but after hearing the sequel isn't actually THAT bad, and how the first was REALLY bad, and a third one is on the way, I wanted to watch them, starting with the first one, obviously.
I went in with rock bottom expectations anyway after reading and hearing a a lot about it yet somehow it managed to be even worse than I imagined and is up there with The Mean One Grinch horror movie for being so bad.
It's just poorly made from start to finish, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and the only thing it shares with Winnie the Pooh is the name as everything else is just garbage.
I can see why a lot of people called this the worst horror movie of 2023. (The best was When Evil Lurks, BTW)
The film starts with Christopher Robin meeting the Hundred Acre Wood animals and befriending them, and despite promising eternal friendship, he leaves for college, abandoning them.
Years later, he returns with his fiancée, only to find the animals have turned hostile, craving human flesh and seeking revenge for his desertion.
If the film's premise wasn't already lacking, it added a bunch of forgettable side characters too, mostly women, with no depth.
The main character, Maria (played by Maria Taylor), has vague nightmares, and she and her friends move into a cabin in Hundred Acre Wood, unaware that Pooh and Piglet are on a killing spree, and it's just all a bit comical. (And Piglet is getting his own film too, BTW)
The killer Winnie the Pooh and Piglet designs are also embarrassingly low-budget, just two guys in cheap rubber masks, and the gore makeup is equally shoddy and the film is filled with unimaginative, poorly shot kill scenes.
Instead of a darkly comedic twist on a children's story, it feels like a generic slasher flick.
It's painfully predictable, especially once the action shifts to Hundred Acre Wood. Characters hear a noise, investigate, and then meet a poorly filmed demise in a repetitive cycle until the movie's over, and the less said about the acting, the better.
While the movie occasionally offers some shallow B-movie excitement, and I do mean shallow, it fails to redeem itself.
The acting is poor, characters lack depth, and the horror elements are pretty shite.
Give this one a miss.
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