Last year, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was the first film out of the gate to cash in on taking beloved children properties that have entered the public domain and turning them into schlocky slashers. While the film wasn’t exactly a hit and was made under an extremely low budget, that didn’t stop its producers from announcing a horror “Poohniverse” stocked that promised an Avengers-like team-up of murderous children story characters.
Kicking things off is the sequel Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, which based on early reviews, is surprisingly more inventive than its title. The film is being praised for improving on the original and rebooting the “Poohniverse” concept by making the original Blood and Honey an in-universe movie paving the way for better character designs and a chance to build an established lore.
You can see what the critics are saying below:
Luke Y. Thompson, The A.V. Club:
All a movie like this really needs to do is deliver gory kills. It helps if there’s a twisted sense of humor involved (lumberjack bear-man with a flaming chainsaw—check!), and an insane backstory never hurts. Add to this a little creativity in terms of lighting and staging, plus actors who don’t suck—the gifted yet indiscriminate Simon Callow, costar of Amadeus and Street Fighter, is aboard as a narrator and a key character—and you have a slasher that’s exactly the junk-food high it’s supposed to be.
Mary Beth McAndrews, Dread Central:
It’s easy to see a film like Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 as a desperate money grab with little to no thought put behind it. But after watching how they built upon their established mythology and crafted even scarier monsters this time around, it’s difficult to not be impressed with what they accomplished. Sure it’s not flawless, but it is the perfect campy slasher to watch on a Friday night, and sometimes that’s all you need. I’m still not convinced we need an entire Poohniverse, but I guess we’ll see…
Tyler Nichols, JoBlo:
I’m shocked to say that I had a fun time with Blood and Honey 2. I went into this showing with my heels dragging and was shocked at the balls it managed to have. The kills are nasty and nearly nonstop. Anytime the story starts to feel dragged down by lore they quickly go to a creative and satisfying kill. It’s clear from the introduction that ran before the movie, that filmmakers Scott Chambers and Rhys Frake-Waterfield have a lot in store for us. And honestly, it seems like they’ve course-corrected and understand the kind of movies these Public Domain Horror Films need to be. And that’s a breezy story that facilitates kill after kill which eventually leads to a nifty final showdown. So long as they don’t break the formula too much, it should be a fun universe to follow.
Anton Bitel, SciFiNow:
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is grotesque and portentous and silly – but with just the right balance of po-faced seriousness and ironic self-awareness to get away with its own inherent absurdities. It is a considerable improvement on the original film, with lost, damaged childhood always lying at its very heart, and trauma never truly dead and buried.
Paul Lê, Bloody Disgusting:
On top of a better story, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II benefits from higher production values. The detailed creature designs and suits are more convincing than before; they don’t just look like actors in masks anymore. Simple yet favorable upgrades, such as articulating mouths and thorough skin texture, make these monsters persuasive as they work toward the film’s ultimate body count. The extra funding also allows for elaborate set-pieces, including a rave-set mass murder and a brief but exciting chainsaw sequence. In addition, Andrew Scott Bell’s score work in these films continues to be a highlight.
However, while one critic agreed that Blood and Honey 2 is an improvement over the first film, that was a pretty low bar to clear, so it doesn’t exactly make the sequel a masterpiece:
Owen Gleiberman, Variety:
I’d be less cynical about all this if the “Winnie the Pooh” horror films were made with a hint of the transgressive skill that infuses Damien Leone’s “Terrifier” films. But they aren’t. At heart, they’re generic slasher movies. You could say, as early reviewers have, that “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2” is “better” than “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” because it’s got a bigger budget and more story. But story is what Frake-Waterfield and his screenwriter, Matt Leslie, are not so hot at.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 will have a limited theatrical release from March 26 to March 28 through Fathom Events.