Raising The Bear [Review: Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2]

Office Marlow: "F**k it, let's bounce."

Tigger: "That's my line!"

Although Christopher Robin has survived the horrors of his time in the Hundred Acre Wood, he has not escaped the nightmare. Not only has he seen his fiancée murdered and witnessed a series of traumatic killings, but he is now being blamed for the massacre, no-one believes his version of events, and even worse the story is being made into a film. And then the killings begin again.

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey, released in 2023 and reviewed here, was a lot of fun, with plenty of action, gore and sacrilegious dismemberment of fond childhood memories. It was entertaining but never really rose above its super-low budget and amateur or student project vibe, and it felt rushed and messy in places. The 2024 Golden Raspberry Awards jury agreed with my take, awarding it Worst Movie, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Remake/Rip-Off/Sequel and Worst Screen Combo. I guess they liked the music then.

Something strange quickly became apparent as I began to watch Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey 2. It's actually rather good. There's a step up in every aspect of the filmmaking - excellent camerawork, colouring, editing, a much stronger script, and some really good performances, adding up to a complete film. The conceit of the horror-film-within-a-horror-film is a deliberate and classy callout to the Scream movies, and there are plenty of other genre references to enjoy.

There are also smart backstories for both Christopher Robin and Pooh, leading to a climax and some shocking final revelations. Admittedly some of the backstory is revealed through dialogue, but if the first rule of moviemaking is "show don't tell", then the second rule is "if you must tell, get Simon Callow to do the telling."

And I am happy to report that all of this decent filmmaking does not detract from the gore, sacrilege and subversion of the first movie. Pooh and Piglet are now joined by Tigger and Owl. Tigger takes some time to get into his stride - it's only towards the end that he really gains bounce and earns his stripes. Owl on the other hand is marvellous - played by Marcus Massey in Hammer villain style with plenty of creepy monologues. The gory body effects, one of the strengths of the first movie, are multiplied to stomach-churning levels.

This is no Get Out or Babadook, but if it's not elevated horror it's still a horror movie that will satisfy die-hard horror fans. It also bodes well for the next batch of films in the Pooh cinematic universe - the Poohniverse. I am now looking forward to Bambi: The Reckoning, Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, Pinocchio: Unstrung and Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.

Score: Three stars out of five.

All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded three stars out of five.

Bearing All [Reviews: Cocaine Bear and Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey]

While all the bear stuff is happening on all the social medias (#TeamBear) this is a good time to retrospectively review two bearsploitation movies released in 2023.

Cocaine Bear (2023), directed by Elizabeth Banks, is loosely based on a real incident in 1985, where a bear found and ate cocaine that had been dropped from a smuggler’s plane.

The movie tells the story of some tourists, a mother, daughter and friend, a park ranger and a wildlife campaigner, some wannabe criminals and some serious criminals who all converge on a forested national park. Into the mix is added the missing cocaine and the bear that finds it. In real life there is no evidence that the bear harmed anyone. In the movie this is not the case and there are several gory fatalities. However this is a character-driven story rather than a bloodbath for its own sake.

The bear is also a character. Early scenes show the effects of the drug – one minute the bear is aggressively focussed on hunting tourists, the next it is happily distracted by a butterfly. As the movie continues we learn a little more about the bear’s background and can empathise with it – this is particularly true of the final act.

Overall this is a unique, enjoyable movie with an excellent, witty and thoughtful script and great performances from all of the ensemble cast, and I would recommend it to fans of horror, comedy, action and bears.

Score: Three stars out of five.

All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded three stars out of five.

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey (2023), directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, is one of a new crop of copyrightsploitation movies taking advantage of the fact that many classic books are now out of copyright. Other recent examples of this genre include Mad Heidi (2022) and Mickey’s Mouse Trap (2024).

The entirely reasonable premise of this movie is that Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet, abandoned by Christopher Robin when he grew up and went to medical school, have become violent, sadistic killers. They take revenge on CR and his fiancée Mary when they return to the Wood try to find CR’s childhood friends, but also go on an indiscriminate killing spree, attacking a group of students holidaying in a cabin. There is blood. Honey, too, but mostly blood to be fair.

The copyright-busting movie genre has its interesting quirks. It is A.A.Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh books that have come out of copyright – the Disney movie version is still protected. So there is nothing to stop a filmmaker presenting Pooh as a serial killer, but he cannot legally be shown wearing a red T-shirt (instead he wears a redneck-style lumberjack shirt). To make it even clearer that this is the book Pooh not the Disney Pooh, the movie starts with an animated introduction very much in the style of the original E.H.Shepard illustrations.

The genre is also growing fast – there is a sequel, Blood And Honey 2, out this year, and further films in the Poohniverse or Twisted Childhood Universe are in the pipeline, including Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble which will feature Pooh alongside twisted literary versions of Bambi, Pinocchio and Peter Pan. Meanwhile the first version of Mickey Mouse, as seen in Steamboat Willie, is now unprotected hence Mickey’s Mouse Trap and several other movie and game projects.

Blood And Honey is a low-budget, low-expectations movie: viewers expecting the quality of script, plot, performance or production values of Cocaine Bear may be slightly disappointed in some ways. These unreasonably high demands from cruel, selfish moviegoers might also explain why this movie won five Golden Raspberries and hardly any Oscars. On the other hand this is a full-on, no-holes-barred gorefest. It’s probably the most violent Winnie-The-Pooh film ever - even more violent than A Blustery Day. And as an animator who myself, back in 2012, put swearing, drug-taking and generally badly behaved LEGO minifigs on screen here, I do appreciate there is a pleasure in the subversion of innocence.

Score: Three stars out of five.

All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded three stars out of five.