Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)
Christopher Robin returns to the 100 Acre Wood several years after leaving for college to find Pooh and Piglet have turned into feral hulking killers. Meanwhile a group of uni girls have rented a nearby property for a weekend of fun.
The lovable characters that were Piglet and Winnie the Pooh are long gone thanks to Robin leaving them to fend for themselves when he left them in the woods without food. Basically they are a savage bear and pig who will kill anything to eat.
I went into this expecting the worst but having been intrigued as to how dreadful a film it was by the outraged reviews on IMDB. I imagine those who said that, and there are many, are Pooh devotees or people whose cinematic experiences haven't gone any further than the MCU and Disney +. Naturally it was critically mauled as well.
It's a film that's remarkably well shot and beautifully lit to say it all takes place at night. For a low budget indie movie it looks great. The acting from the unknown cast is variable but never terrible and the gore effects are excellent as are the weird and creepy masks of Pooh and especially Piglet. At eighty minutes there's enough going on to maintain interest with a final half hour which i thought was great fun.
So whilst this is never going to be anyones choice as a favourite slasher film it has a lot more going for it than say The Prey, Trapped Alive, Doom Asylum, Deadly Games and Girls Nite Out, all of which have had boutique releases by Arrow Video for instance and this was way better than The Banana Splits Movie too.
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