Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey ★★ 

IN CASE you’re not aware, Winnie the Pooh is now fair game.

On 1 January 2022, the beloved children’s book series entered the public domain in the United States, meaning anybody could have a crack at telling a story using the same characters.

It took British writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield just a few months to start filming his low budget slasher Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, featuring Pooh and Piglet on a bloody revenge rampage targeting Christopher Robin, his girlfriend and anyone else who gets in the way.

The first act of the film, shot over just ten days in a Sussex forest, is actually quite inventive and promising.

It starts with a back story told with basic visuals similar to the drawings you would see in one of A. A. Milne’s books. But in this version of the story everything is idyllic in the Hundred Acre Wood until Christopher Robin has to return home to his human family.

His new-found furry friends are unhappy that Christopher leaves and find themselves struggling to survive the winter months. Eventually the starving Pooh and company are forced to turn on one of their own in order to survive. Their dire situation manifests in anger towards the friend they believe deserted them.

We then meet adult Christopher Robin who is returning to the Hundred Acre Wood years later to show his girlfriend the place where he has so many fond memories.

But what they find is a home that looks more like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with sharp farm implements everywhere, large jars filled with nothing resembling honey and two former cute little friends now all grown up and turned into bloodthirsty ferals.

Unfortunately, from that point the film gets much less interesting. The one-note joke runs thin and much of the kill scenes lack the required tension.

In many ways, for most of the film Pooh and Piglet could just have been any killer in a mask, such is the lack of anything interesting to say or portray that continues the inventiveness of the opening.

Apparently a sequel is in development but, if it doesn’t fully lean into the concept, they’re better off leaving Pooh and his friends to the kids.

Watched in the cinema.