Copy provided for review
In 2023, Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain. Thanks to how stupidly copyright law has been written, the bear of very little brain was finally free to be used by anyone a mere 97 years after he first appeared in the book Winnie The Pooh. Naturally, the first thing that was done with him is the same thing that’s often done when well-known family-friendly characters are free for anyone to use, someone made a horror movie out of it. Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey came out to be a surprising box office hit, making over 5 million dollars on a $100,000 budget… it was also god awful, it ranked third on my list of the worst films of 2023, it swept the ever-controversial Razzies where it took home 5 of the 9 awards and was a joke to everyone who thought about cinema of 2023. The idea that it earned enough to get a sequel was laughable and there was no doubt that any sequel was going to be an inevitable horrible piece of shit… so why the hell do I like this film?
Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 picks up shortly after the first movie’s events. Christopher Robin (Scott Chambers) is trying his best to regain some kind of a normal life which is a little hard since everyone believes that he’s responsible for the murders that have come to be known as the Hundred Acre Massacre. While most people refuse to believe Christopher’s story of a pair of creatures living in the woods, there are a few who do believe in him and they go hunting for Pooh and Piglet. This invasion into their woods angers Pooh and Piglet who, along with their friends Owl and Tigger, decide to finish what they started and go after Christopher Robin… and kill anyone who gets between them and their intended target.
Blood and Honey 2 feels like the creators looked at all the feedback that was screamed at them by the internet and said “Alright, we’ll take that challenge” and implemented almost all of it in ways that are surprisingly effective and make for a film that is unexpectedly enjoyable in its own demented way. Let me make sure that I’m not overselling this, Blood and Honey 2 is still a trashy film that’s revelling in its own bad-taste joke. It’s still taking a childhood icon and telling the vilest joke it possibly can… the difference is that this time the joke is funny and the trash has gone from boring and forgettable to occasionally hilarious and often so insane it’s hard to believe that this is really a sequel to the piece of crap that came out a year ago. Films like Blood and Honey don’t often get sequels like Blood and Honey 2, but I guess a bigger budget and time to actually plan your joke properly can make something kind of enjoyable happen.
So start with something basic but stunningly important, the first movie had the main antagonists wear masks that looked like they were found in the discount aisle of a 2 dollar shop. They weren’t scary or particularly memorable, they were just bad. This time the strange iterations of the A.A. Milne characters have unique and distinct designs that allow them to do things like show emotion and deliver dialogue (oh yeah, they talk in this one… I know the first film came up with an excuse why they didn’t, just forget that film ever existed because this film would like you to pretend it didn’t happen). That one little change means that the villains at the core of the movie are interesting enough to make them something other than big guys in shitty masks. This feels like a demented version of Tigger, Pooh, Owl and Piglet that fits in the kind of dark throwback horror film they’ve found themselves in.
Something that Blood And Honey really stumbled with was a lack of connection to the source material, the entire film felt like it was just a cheap version of The Strangers but with slightly different masked characters. None of the kills felt like they referenced the books, no memorable lines were lifted and used creatively, it was a film that used the idea of Winnie the Pooh but not the actual character. Well, Blood and Honey 2 clearly decided to go all in because there are several moments where they find a fun horror twist on some classic moments, from the little black rain cloud to the phrase ‘bear of very little brain’, there’s little nods to the books just littered throughout the film which means the joke is no longer just “Here’s a guy in a Winnie the Pooh mask doing some murder”, the joke has layers which makes it funnier.
Just as a specific example, in the lore of Winnie the Pooh, there’s a game that Pooh and Christopher Robin play where they drop sticks off one side of a bridge into a small river and run over to the other side to see whose stick gets there first. It’s a cute simple setting that leads to the start of a lot of cute fun scenes between Christopher and Pooh throughout the books and every adaptation that’s ever existed… This film takes that image and recreates it with severed limbs instead of sticks. It’s a simple twist but that moment is when it struck me that Blood and Honey 2 might have actually figured out the joke they were trying to do this entire time. It’s an actually fun horror twist on the source material, a little nod that fans of the original books will get a real chuckle out of just because it’s so stupid that it’s funny.
What’s also kind of amazing is that Blood and Honey 2 decided that it should maybe have the central protagonist be Christopher Robin instead of a bunch of random women in a random house, meaning we get a lot more time to actually explore the character of Christopher Robin. This version of Christopher Robin is still trying to deal with the trauma of the massacre from last year but is also proven time and time again to just be a good person trying to do good things, he works as a nurse and looks after his family and has childhood trauma that he may have repressed (hinting that Winnie might’ve always been somewhat evil) and he also gets more than a few scenes where he just gets to show off a grand emotional range. It’s probably fortunate that the first film was so dull that you can forget that they recast every single role so no one was really attached to the original Christopher Robin, the new actor really brings a surprising level of sweet innocence that sells that this is the same boy who loved his bear growing up and can’t believe what that bear is doing.
Now, while I have been heaping praise on this film (I’d worry about ruining my reputation but I’m the guy who said Cocaine Bear was the best film of last year, I don’t have a reputation to ruin!) That’s not to say it’s a total slam dunk. For starters, there’s a reliance on CG gore effects throughout the film which is very noticeable and kind of depressing because this film has plenty of practical effects that look genuinely fantastic so to see them badly enhanced by subpar CG doesn’t help. I’m not saying you can’t use CG to do touch-ups but… well, we figured out how to make heads explode pretty effectively back in the ’80s, you could just keep doing that and it’ll work. It means some moments that should have more of an impact end up kind of flopping.
There’s also the fact that there are moments where this film is doing a bit too much in an attempt to set up a cinematic universe by bringing in evil experiments and referencing grander things to come (Because this is the childhood horror version of the MCU, with upcoming films about Bambi, Peter Pan and Pinocchio already planned). These moments absolutely destroy the mood that Blood and Honey 2 worked surprisingly hard to get, we don’t need a weird backstory for Winnie the Pooh being like this… we already had one last time, it would’ve done the job here but they had to throw in something more convoluted which ends up bogging the film down. Even the end credits remind you that we’re about to be thrust into a connected universe of this stuff and I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the last company that tried to do a connected universe right away was the DC universe and look how that went! The insistence that this is the start of a serious franchise is laughable, taking time from the pulpy fun of this film to set up other films is dumb and shouldn’t have been done.
When Blood and Honey 2 does lean into being the fun pulpy slasher that you would want it to be, that’s when this thing shines. It’s genuinely dark and twisted with more than a few moments that’re so joyously over the top and fun that it’s hard not to cheer, and then be shocked that Blood and Honey 2 was the reason you caught yourself cheering. If you were to make the ideal version of a fucked up horror film based on a beloved children’s property it’s hard to think of anything that could beat what’s been done here. It’s the kind of silly trashy slasher fare that is almost designed for a late night drunk movie party with friends who can enjoy the absurdity of everything that’s on display.
Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 should have been an abysmal failure, the first one certainly was, so this one by all rights should’ve been just as bad… but Blood and Honey 2 understands why it exists. It gets the joke, it gets why you might possibly want to see this kind of film and it delivers that. It’s still not great, it’s very rough around the edges and has more than enough flaws that it will not shock anyone to see it put on several lists of bad films this year but I can’t do that. Yeah, it’s got problems, but it’s an undeniably fun time. This is that weird as fuck childhood-destroying film that used to be found on the very bottom row of the horror shelf in every old video store, the kind that you knew was going to taint a few memories before it was done. It’s wild, over the top, stupid as fuck and occasionally delightful. When the time came to make this film, someone realised that a little consideration, a little thought for others, makes all the difference… they thought about their audience and about what they would want to see, to my absolute shock and utter delight. Blood and Honey 2 hits the sweet spot that you would hope this kind of film could hit. It will not be for everyone, but at least this time it feels like this film is actually for someone!
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