Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a 2023 horror slasher movie starring the animals from the Hundred Acre Wood. The movie began production in January 2022, right after Winnie-the-Pooh’s first book became public domain in the United States.
The director has gone on to state that petitions were made to stop the movie’s production and that he received multiple death threats. It’s weird to think that Winnie-the-Pooh’s fans would be so rabid, but I’ll give the director the benefit of the doubt.
The movie centers around Christopher Robin’s visit to the Hundred Acre Wood, now as an adult. As a kid, Christopher befriended Pooh, Owl, Eeyore, Rabbit, and Piglet, who are described in this universe as human-animal cross-breeds.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)
Production: Jagged Edge Productions, ITN Studios
Distributor: Altitude Film Distribution
Director: Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Release Date: January 26th, 2023
This immediately feels like a cop-out; making the Hundred Acre Wood animals cross-breeds means that they are essentially just humans with animal heads, and this lets the director avoid having to come up with any sort of interesting monster design.
The now-married Christopher Robin goes to the Hundred Acre Wood so he can prove to his wife that Pooh and the other cross-breeds were real, but he finds the place in a much different state than he remembered.
It turns out that Christopher was the only source of food for all of the animals in the forest, as he would sneak food from his house to bring it to them. This eventually led the cross-breeds to eat each other, becoming more warped and animalistic.
Christopher and his wife, who deliver some of the worst performances I have seen in a while, stumble upon a now-menacing Pooh with a crazed look in his face. Piglet and Pooh kill Christopher’s wife and drag him into a cave to watch her body burn.
Parts of the movie’s introduction sequence are presented in a really rough animated art style, and on my first watch I thought that it was Christopher’s body being burned since he’s shown being dragged into the cave alone.
Later in the movie, we do find out that Christopher has been kidnapped and is still alive. It may seem like a red herring at first, but I believe it’s just a failure on the animator’s part when it comes to conveying this detail.
The first look we get at both Pooh and Piglet speaks volumes about this movie’s costume designs. Pooh’s costume looks lifeless at best and like a guy wearing a cheap rubber mask at worst, depending on the lighting.
Piglet’s costume manages to look even worse, not only because it’s just a generic boar head but also because it has a visible seam on the neck. I’m still not sure if the seam was an attempt to give him a fat roll, but it looks like a seam regardless.
After Christopher Robin’s kidnapping, the focus of the movie shifts to a group of women who are staying at a vacation house near the Hundred Acre Wood. One of the women planned this trip to get away from a stalker, who despite being caught, still left her with PTSD.
I would call these characters by name, but we get about two scenes of them interacting with each other before they start dropping like flies. In fact, one of them doesn’t even make it to the house before being killed off.
Every horror movie needs characters doing dumb things to facilitate their deaths; that’s always a given, but the characters in this movie are morons. They walk into traps left and right, always making nonsensical decisions that just can’t be explained by the plot.
Due to the movie’s budget, almost every actor is known for only a handful of independent movies, and most of their performances are really rough. My favorite scene from Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is this one, because of the fantastic delivery:
The first character to die after the movie’s introduction is the girl who didn’t make it to the house. She gets lost and steps out of the car to make a call, and upon realizing that she has no cell signal, decides to go into the woods, since everyone knows trees are natural signal boosters. This leads to her having her clothes torn off by pooh and then killed.
The second girl, after hearing a harrowing stalker story from her friend, sits in a jacuzzi outside. She decides to take a selfie and ends up seeing Pooh in the background. Her solution to the problem is to look around, turn the other way, and close her eyes.
She ends up getting dragged out of the jacuzzi, and Pooh runs her over with a car. I don’t know how he learned how to drive, but maybe the Hundred Acre Wood has a fantastic driver’s education program, because he does a good job at running her over.
It’s really hard to care for any of these characters because most of them are just there. The movie completely skips over character development and jumps straight into the kills, but still manages to be horribly paced, which is honestly an accomplishment.
Christopher Robin is the most developed character, but he only shows up for about 10% of the movie. For most of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, we follow these uninteresting characters with no sort of dynamic, personality, or motive.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey‘s first decent kill is roughly 50 minutes in, where one of the women gets hit in the face with a sledgehammer. The effect looks fine, but that’s mostly because it’s seen from far away and has a depth of field effect on top of it.
It’s honestly a very peculiar choice to have such a proof-of-concept in your hands but still care so little about it. There was no thought given to the costumes; none of the actors are really competent; none of the characters are well written; and none of the kills are fun to watch.
The movie eventually culminates in a showdown between Pooh and a bunch of rednecks who do their best to try and save the two remaining girls. Pooh gets attacked by them all at once but shrugs off all of the attacks in this scene that feels like an homage to Friday the 13th.
I’m assuming the rednecks don’t own guns because they are British, which leads them to lose the fight and get “mauled” by Pooh. Despite being humanoid, Pooh has bear claws, but his way of mauling is by slapping people, which looks ridiculous to watch.
Pooh eventually makes his way to the remaining girls and kills one of them, leading Christopher, who was saved by them earlier, to rescue the remaining survivor. In an attempt to save her, Christopher tries to negotiate with Pooh, saying he’ll stay behind if he lets the girl go, but Pooh refuses and kills her.
Christopher watches, horrified, and then runs away while the credits fade in. The scariest moment of the movie happens right after the credits, where the text pops up and says: “Winnie-The-Pooh will return”. The thought of sitting through another one of these awful movies really terrified me.
Having a movie with both underdeveloped characters and killers just makes for an experience where you don’t really care about anyone. Couple that with the movie’s grating pacing and bad script, and it becomes a recipe for disaster.
In conclusion, there are much better things to do with your time than watch Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. Being the first to capitalize on the property’s public domain status is a really good idea on paper, but no good idea can survive being placed in incompetent hands.
You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is available on DVD and Blu-Ray via Amazon. It can also be purchased or rented through Amazon Prime Video.
