Film Review: WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY (2023): An Overly Violent Horror Film That Has a Few Interesting Moments

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Review

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield and starring Nikolai Leon, Amber Doig-Thorne, Craig David-Dowsett, Chris Cordell, Natasha Rose Mills, Danielle Ronald, Paula Coiz, May Kelly, Danielle Scott, Natasha Tosini, Maria Taylor, Gillian Broderick, Frederick Dallaway, Simon Ellis, Mark Haldor, Marcus Massey and Richard D. Myers.

Filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is a very low budget vision of what would happen if the beloved cartoon character, Winnie the Pooh, became a psychotic murderer. “Whoever needed or wanted such a film?” is a question that many potential viewers may ask before viewing the movie. This is definitely not a horror picture that will please most fans of traditional slasher killers such as Jason, Freddy or Michael Myers. That’s partly because the back story of the new picture is reduced to a brief narration over some pictures telling us that Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) abandoned Winnie the Pooh and his other animal friends in order to go to college. Thus, Winnie the Pooh and his friends were left to fend for themselves and started by eating one of their own: Eeyore. If this plot sounds interesting to you, then you’re the one this movie was intended for.

As the film opens, Christopher has returned from college with a lover named Mary (Paula Coiz). Christopher is seemingly looking to make amends with the poor creatures he abandoned about half a decade after his departure. Here’s where the movie’s problems begin. Christopher is obviously struggling from some sort of instability. That’s not because the creatures Christopher tells Mary he is looking for aren’t real in the movie. It’s because he thinks the creatures will welcome him back with open arms after he left them to starve to death. What’s even more bizarre is that Mary stands by her man even when it is apparent that if they stay around the home of Pooh too long, they are most likely going to be killed. Oh, poor Mary. She never stood a chance.

Maria (Maria Taylor), another character in the film, is in therapy with a caring professional (Gillian Broderick in the film’s best performance). It seems Maria was the victim of being stalked by a creepy man. Well, it’s about to get a lot worse for her as she travels to the 100 Acre Wood to have the vacation she dreams of (I’m being sarcastic) with several other women who basically exist in the movie as Pooh bait.

Craig David-Dowsett plays Winnie the Pooh as a wicked creature devoid of any emotion. The mask that David-Dowsett is forced to don isn’t that bad but the problem is his partner in murder is Piglet (Chris Cordell) whose face (mask) looks very similar. Since many of the scenes are in the pitch black dark, it’s hard to make out who’s who in some of the scenes. I had to hear Christopher Robin say, “Why did you do that, Piglet?” to know who just killed a certain victim. Yes, it was, indeed, Piglet, even though I’m not sure that was the exact quote Robin says to him.

One character, Lara (Natasha Tosini) ends up in a hot tub in one of the better scenes of the movie. Some of the other sequences that occur defy logic or are way too gruesome for their own good. Four guys can’t take down the evil Winnie the Pooh. That’s somewhat forgivable as the movie makers may have wanted to make Winnie invincible or the next Jason, Michael, Freddy, whatever. However, when a killer in the movie sticks a knife through a woman’s mouth, the camera lingers too long on the aftereffects of the murder, ruining the fun that a movie like this could be if it wanted to be. Face it–horror movies could be fun in a demented sort of way, but this film (which has all the ingredients for success) is ultimately too mean-spirited for its own good.

Leon is decent as Christopher Robin in any scene he appears in besides the opening ones in which Leon is actually pretty unbelievable. Leon’s performance gets better as the movie goes on. Chris Cordell and Craig David-Dowsett are occasionally creepily effective in their movements under their masks when you can actually differentiate which one is which. If the movie wasn’t so plain demented, it would have been better, though. It’s not fair to deduct points for the low budget which allows certain scenes to play as they play, for better or worse.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is the type of oddball movie that could one day pop up at a horror marathon or midnight movie screening so it’s not a total loss. Audiences could close their eyes during the most grotesque moments in the picture and the film basically exists as a curiosity piece for hardcore, die-hard horror fans. It probably doesn’t matter if you hate the movie because, as it plays, it was never meant to be taken that seriously anyway.

Rating: 4/10

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