Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 review: the bear necessities for a good time

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 13^th 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.