After desecrating your Facebook auntie’s favourite cartoon teddy bear with last year’s Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, director Rhys Frake-Waterfield returns to 100 Acre Wood to violate silly old Pooh afresh.
A scrappy, low-budget work of Poohsploitation, the original Blood and Honey was about as good as anyone had any right to expect: impressively brutal but marred by bad performances and distastefully misogynistic violence. This sequel feels like Frake-Waterfield’s attempt to re-do the things that didn’t work the first time – with the original Blood and Honey existing in-universe as a cinematic adaptation of events experienced by Christopher Robin (Scott Chambers).
Now reviled by a community who believe him responsible for Pooh’s killing spree, Christopher lives at home with his parents (Alec Newman and Nicola Wright) and little sister (Thea Evans). Attempting to come to terms with his trauma, Christopher’s therapy sessions begin to unearth a dark secret from his past… and one which may reveal the origins of Pooh, too.
Blood and Honey II is an improvement over its predecessor by every conceivable benchmark, from the surprisingly decent performances to the moody cinematography and creative violence. The film does away with the original Pooh’s more cartoonish features, re-imagining the beast as something leaner and far meaner than before. Pooh (Ryan Oliva) comes accompanied by chums Piglet, Owl, and Tigger, each given the same edgelord makeover. With Piglet the Leatherface to Pooh’s Victor Crowley, that leaves Owl as a Jeepers Creepers-esque figure of flying menace, and Tigger a fairly obvious Freddy Krueger stand-in (stripes; claws; says ‘bitch’ a lot). The villains are all fairly one-note, but the dynamic is a fresh one for slasher cinema, giving four monsters for the price of one.
Where its predecessor was content to coast on the novelty of Winnie-the-Pooh: horror monster, Blood and Honey II feels like an actual film, with surprising depth to its lore. Chugging along at a breezy 93 minutes, it nips from one gory set piece to the next, rarely pausing to deflate the inherent silliness. All that, and Simon Callow too, whose brief appearance lends the film a sense of legitimacy that the first one was sorely lacking.
Those same problems are there at its core – cynical pandering for the memes, a preponderance of misogynistic violence – but Blood and Honey II at least has the good grace and budget to have fun this time.
WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY II is on limited release in UK cinemas now.
