‘Winnie-the-Pooh Blood and Honey 2’ Review — A Surprising Improvement

The Big Picture

• Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2
  improves upon its predecessor by exploring Christopher Robin’s trauma and providing answers to lingering questions.
• The sequel shifts focus to provide stronger character development and storytelling rather than solely gratuitous horror.
• However, despite some improvements, the film still struggles with shaky directing during violent scenes and fails to fully utilize the potential of the Poohniverse.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honeywas one of the worst films released last year. A mind-numbingly boring film that was poorly made in every way, it coasted on the idea of doing disturbing things to a beloved property that was now in the public domain. Blood and Honey couldn’t even come close to so-bad-it’s-good territory, as writer-director Rhys Frake-Waterfield took an idea that theoretically could’ve had potential, and squandered it to make a terrible slasher film that cost only $100,000. It was filmed over ten days and truly felt like it.

But a lack of imagination and good ideas didn’t stop this universe from rolling ahead, with plans for a larger “Poohniverse” recently announced that would bring in those like Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Bambi, The Mad Hatter, Tinkerbell, and more from Blood and Honey—not to mention a slew of other characters getting their own individual films. It seemed as though the failure of the first film hadn’t deterred this cinematic Poohniverse of public domain fantasy characters to just steamroll right along.

Yet it’s with a sequel that no one seemingly wanted, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, that the legs of this concept are truly tested. Is Frake-Waterfield really going to make an entire world, skating by solely on people’s nostalgia for characters largely popularized by Disney animated films? Or is Blood and Honey 2 an opportunity to correct the errors of the first film and right this ship into something actually interesting? With Blood and Honey 2 the answer is yes to both.

What Is ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2’ About?

Blood and Honey 2 explains that since the events of the first film, both Winnie-the-Pooh (Ryan Oliva) and Christopher Robin (Scott Chambers) have been ostracized by the community of Christopher’s hometown of Ashdown. After the Hundred-Acre Massacre, there are many in the town who believe Christopher is lying that anthropomorphic creatures killed all these people, and that Christopher is the true murderer. Meanwhile, some who do believe that Christopher is telling the truth are searching the woods for Winnie, and his friends Owl (Marcus Massey) and Tigger (Lewis Santer). Instead of hiding, Owl suggests that they should take the fight to the people and teach them a lesson on their own turf.

For Christopher, the events of the past haunt him regularly. A terrible movie has been made about the events of what happened to him (which is, actually, the first Blood and Honey), and Christopher visits a therapist to try and uncover things that he’s buried in his past—including what happened to his brother who disappeared at a young age. Christopher tries to make sense of what led to all of this, while the Hundred-Acre Wood crew of murderers become a true threat to the people of Ashdown.

‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2’ Smartly Changes Focus to Christopher Robin

Right away, Blood and Honey 2 makes some promising strides in the right direction. The idea of making the original film an in-universe recreation of events is a sly way to restart this universe and accept that previous film for what it is. Similarly, the parallels between Christopher and Winnie make for a stronger narrative. This time around, Blood and Honey 2 is written by Matt Leslie, who seems to actually have ideas that go beyond just coming up with, “Hey, what if Winnie the Pooh was a maniac serial killer?” For example, the first film left the audience with plenty of questions that the film had simply no interest in answering, like why the hell does Winnie-the-Pooh look like a massive man wearing a shitty bear mask, how did these creatures come to life, and why did I pay good, hard-earned money to see this film? Blood and Honey 2 answers those first two questions, and in doing so, makes what was a nonsensical horror series seem like there’s actually some method to this madness.

Blood and Honey 2 also makes the smart choice to center this story around Christopher Robin, his family, and the trauma that started this situation in the first place. The first film focused far too much on generic, mindless horror tropes with no real narrative purpose, but with Chambers—taking over as Christoper from Nikolai Leon—this sequel does a decent job of trying to inject some humanity into this ludicrous idea. Thanks to Leslie’s script, Christopher’s journey for answers is far more entertaining and intriguing than whatever murder spree is going on with those monstrous killers. Again, this series seems like it was pieced together from the barest idea possible, but Leslie’s approach to this story at least tries to turn this into something that works and sort of succeeds.

But There’s Still a Long Way to Go For the Poohniverse

But to be clear, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 isn’t a complete 180 from the first film: it’s a step in a better direction than the first one, which is an extremely low bar. It does at least seem like Frake-Waterfield took the criticisms that were made about the first film and actually attempted to do things better with this sequel, but still, there’s more work to be done. Blood and Honey 2 still isn’t as scary, shocking in its violence, or funny as it thinks it is, and the best aspects of this film merely come from seeing the improvements made since the last one. There’s also still absolutely no reason why this is a Winnie-the-Pooh story and not just a film about a kid being haunted by his childhood friends, other than that this series knows that people are going to see it based on morbid curiosity alone. Even with the introduction of Tigger and Owl (who looks like Ivan Ooze from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie), there’s very little being done to go all-in. Besides a few one-liners that tie to the Milne books, this still feels like a cash grab courtesy of the public domain.

Another reason why Christopher’s segments of Blood and Honey 2 work so much better than the actual horror parts is that the directing here is still extremely rough. When this is somewhat of a drama, Frake-Waterfield doesn’t have to do much behind the camera, and yet, that works. However, when the blood starts spilling, this becomes a dark, shaky mess, poorly edited and clearly filmed with an attempt to hide the low-budget nature of the action. Often, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on during these murders, due to the darkness, the ever-present fog, the rapid-fire cutting, or all three at once. There are much better ways to hide low budgets in horror films, and this simply isn’t how to go about it. If anything, the direction makes the more direct horror aspects of Blood and Honey 2 the weakest part of the film.

Compared to the train wreck that was the first film, Blood and Honey 2 starts to take its possibilities a bit more seriously as it tries to reach this idea’s true potential. This sequel finds some clever ways to fix some fundamental issues, and while this series still has plenty of problems, at least it’s clear that Frake-Waterfield and Leslie are trying to figure out the best way to tackle this as they go along and with what resources they do have. Blood and Honey 2 still isn’t exactly “good,” and it might be a bit premature to start working on a sprawling Poohniverse, but considering the dregs this series began at, this is a flawed improvement that’s still a bear of little brain.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is now in theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes.

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