With the release of the new movie Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, we officially have not just one, but two splatter films where a feral Winnie the Pooh butchers, mutilates, and chops up dozens of innocent people (children included.)
Many horror fans, including myself, are asking how we ended up here. When movie theaters closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, audiences switched to watching movies on streaming platforms. After movie theaters opened, many people who switched to streaming during the pandemic continued to prefer watching at home to theaters. As a result, they didn’t return to the cinema and box office revenues declined. As a result, major studios were afraid to release movies for fear they would become box office flops. Variety reported that studios planned to release fewer major films in 2023 than they did in pre-pandemic years.
Because of a lack of new releases, desperate movie theaters began to show more independent, low-budget films like Terrifier 2, and of course, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Despite its limited theatrical release, the first movie grossed over five million dollars on a fifty thousand dollar budget. Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield saw an opportunity to make a lot of money when Arthus Milne’s classic children’s character Winnie the Pooh became public domain in 2022, and he definitely used the opportunity to his advantage.
This sequel has already made a mint in its short run. It’s clear Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield invested more money into this follow-up. Even Pooh’s mask received an upgrade, costing Waterfield and his crew $20,000 compared to the $770 price tag for the mask in the first movie.
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With its increased budget, Blood and Honey 2 is a slight improvement from the first movie. Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield created this movie with one goal in mind: make people cringe from gorey deaths. And he succeeded in that conceit. It’s certainly hard to watch the beloved bear claw somebody’s face until their skeleton is exposed.
This is not deep or philosophical horror. This movie answers questions like “How many people can a feral bear kill in 95 minutes?” (Waterfield promised us 30 deaths, a testament to what his artistic intentions were when he made this movie).
While the special effects in the franchise have improved, I felt annoyed by the modifications applied to Pooh and Owl’s voices. Pooh and Owl are given stereotypical modulated demon voices that sound corny and artificial.
And why do Pooh and Owl talk so much in this movie? One of the better scenes in the first movie occurs when Christopher Robin begs Pooh to stop his massacre. Pooh looks at Christopher Robin with a blank expression before responding with a menacing “You left” and plunging his knife into Christopher Robin’s friend. This scene is impactful because Pooh explains his motivation in two words, the only words we hear from him in the entire movie. If Waterfield wants to create the next Terrifier, he should take note that Art the Clown doesn’t speak.
Blood and Honey 2 horrifies, but I didn’t take the horror with me when I exited the theater. After 95 minutes, it’s easy to become desensitized to the gruesome deaths of the movie’s overacted characters. Looking back, some of the kills in this movie don’t shock me the way they did when I first saw them for precisely this reason.
Blood and Honey 2 is a cheap and disposable horror movie. While it aims for a charming low-budget classic slasher vibe, I prefer slasher movies with less blood and more restraint.
Wicked Rating: 4/10
