The news of the Disney copyright expiring for Winnie the Pooh and film director Rhys Frake-Waterfield making a horror film of the beloved character was a big deal but ultimately on the films 2023 release it was much ado about nothing. In fairness that was about as close as the film was ever going to get to Shakespeare and the films notoriety and peoples curiosity saw the film make $5m off its shoestring budget (‘Perhaps if more of the budget had been spent on the film rather than shoestrings it would have been better!’ – Ed). So now we have a sequel – Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey 2 ( we were hoping for Pooh 2) and there’s a notably larger budget here.
After the 100 Acre Wood massacre of the first film this sequel picks up with Christopher Robin (Scott Chambers) something of an outcast pilloried by society suspecting him of involvement in the slaughter. It’s the rumours that see his car vandalized and him unjustifiably sacked from his job as a nurse in the local hospital and now returning to live with his parents and younger (much younger) sister and he’s undergoing therapy too after the atrocity of the first film something that most audiences underwent also after seeing the film.
But with Pooh and Piglet still out there somewhere in the woods the carnage continues with an opening scene of three party girls in a caravan trying to summon the spirit of Winnie in a séance who duly obliges and slaughters the lot of them. But Pooh’s entourage of killer characters has now expanded to include Tigger and a murderous Owl who is the one pushing them on to take revenge against the people of the village.
Unlike the first film there’s a bid to understand just what is driving these characters to kill and it’s all part of a back story that’s hinted at and finally explained by, of all people, Simon Callow adopting a Scottish brogue and surely wondering why he didn’t ask for a bigger fee.
That the film got a sequel is as much a surprise to Winnie the Pooh as it is to audiences. That follows up are often worse than what came before was proved by Liz Truss, a sort of Wish.com version of a Prime Minster but going against the law of sequels Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey 2 is significantly better than the first and that’s a sentence we didn’t expect to ever be writing although let’s be fair it was a low bar that had been set.
The script is far better taking in a back story that sees Christopher Robin’s little brother abducted when they were boys and also just how Winnie, Piglet, Owl & Tigger came into being is satisfactorily answered. The bigger budget sees a vast improvement on the make-up in the first film which was nothing more than a man in a rigid mask with all the facial expressiveness of a botoxed Amanda Holden. The prosthetic make-up allows close ups and it is Owl who is best of the bastard bunch and the film makers having the budget to get him swooping in and out of shots grabbing victims to be. It’s the bigger budget too that sees director Frake-Waterfield and his DoP Vince Knight up their game with some strikingly lit scenes and engaging camera moves that elevates the whole look of the film.
With a climatic scene that sees them converge on a warehouse rave there’s enough kills to satisfy gore hounds (with nods to Driller Killer and Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and the news that this second film is part of a larger Pooh-niverse of kids classics turned feral that will include Pinocchio, Bambi, Peter Pan and Sleeping Beauty. The danger is that the novelty of these family favourites turned serial killers wears off very quickly and whether the premise will support such an endeavour remains to be seen but this sequel is a marked improvement on the first film
related feature : From the first film we chatted with Amber Doig Thorne about the making of the film…..
related feature : ‘Winnie the Pooh : Blood and Honey’ review
Here’s the trailer……
From the first film we chatted with Amber Doig Thorne about the making of the film…..
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