I decided on a whim to host a watch party for the film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. It was simultaneously a funny decision as well as an infuriating one. The funny thing is, we watched this film and then watched the second one, and it wasn’t until the second one that I realized that the first was probably bad for a reason. I won’t explain that reason until I review the second one though.
I also say “we” because I hosted this watch party in my Discord. Quite a few of us showed up including; Kingdarius4lyfe, Mrcbeaches, Shmatty69bird, and Ghosteater. We had a blast watching these two films (with a little frustration sprinkled in). But, I'm rambling so let's get into what this film is about.
The friends residing in the 100 Acre Wood believe that Christopher Robin abandoned them and this causes them to harbor negative feelings about the situation. They also go through starvation when food becomes scarce and resort to eating each other. This causes them to revert back to their animalistic state (in a way). Any unlucky soul that happens to cross their path will meet their unfortunate end.
This is all I can really say about the film without spoiling it, so if you haven’t seen it, feel free to stop reading and come back after you see it. You can watch the trailer here. If you’ve seen it or don’t mind spoilers… let’s continue on!
The film opens with Christopher Robin and his fiancée, Mary, on a walk to visit his friends in the 100 Acre Wood. Throughout this walk Mary is telling Christopher about how they’re imaginary (which…. ma’am why are we gaslighting? Winnie-The-Pooh is real as well as the bashful Piglet, mopey Eeyore, energetic Tigger, responsible Rabbit, wise Owl, and the lovely Kanga and Roo. How dare she?) Christopher ignores her and presses on, wanting her to meet them.
The two make it to a makeshift camp? The friends don’t seem to live off the land like their animated counterparts. They had some trailers set up and further along sits a mansion of a house that Christopher and Mary make their way into. I’m getting ahead of myself though…. They come across an area where there is blood and a sign displays “RIP Eeyoore” in blood as well, but the two simply ignore it, pressing on until they get to the house. (I would like to mention that Mary protested quite a bit and wanted to turn back because things felt weird, but I guess she just gave up).
Night falls and the two leave, but they come face-to-face with Piglet. Bashful Piglet is no more as he wastes no time in strangling Mary with a chain and truthfully, Christopher didn’t fight hard enough to save her. He just stood there, screaming… If he was going to let her die, he could have just ran away to at least save himself, but alas…. he gets caught up.
~~~
This story of violence is told before its contrasted with the calm of another character talking to her therapist. Maria underwent therapy sessions due to a horrific event that had happened in her past. It was hinted at that there was a man in her life that had caused her this pain, but I’ll explain it here. Maria basically had a stalker, a peeping-tom. She discovered him when he was peeping through her window and she did everything she could to keep him away from her. He eventually managed to break into her home while she slept and attempted to undress her, but she wakes up and (I assume) she fought back. The viewer learns this tale about her attacker later in the movie, but it felt better to place this information here for storytelling purposes.
Maria’s therapist tells her that she needs to take a weekend to get away and unplug and Maria takes her up on this and brings some of her friends with her. One friend, Tina, is lagging behind as the others decide to carpool. Long story short, she finds her way to our murderous friends. For some reason, Tina opts to travel further into the woods instead of waiting in her car for her friends to call her back to give her directions. Winnie-the-murder bear finds her, chases her down, and bashes her head repeatedly on the corner of a woodchipper before shoving her into it. I’m pretty sure she was dead before he threw her in, but still… brutal. Now, Tina was in contact with Maria earlier in the day, but as I type this review… I realized that the friends never asked about Tina’s whereabouts after that initial phone call. So, they go about their day without ever wondering where Tina is or what she’s doing.
Moving on… I’m going to actually take us back a bit. The friends that car-pooled arrive at their cabin and the first thing they do is give up their phones (since they’re supposed to un-plug for the weekend). This would explain why Tina was unable to get into contact with them. I’m sorry, but there’s no way I would give up my phone unless it’s to sit it in the middle of a table at a restaurant we’re eating at. It's Horror-101, but it always seems like characters in horror movies have never seen a horror movie. I find it funny in this case because Maria lived one. Later on, it doesn’t really matter that they had given their phones up because it’s not brought up again when things start going down. So it feels like a waste that we had this whole exchange.
I would like to pause here to say….
None of these characters have a sliver of survival instinct.
The will to live is non-e x i s t e n t.
Lara seems like the “It” girl of the group. She’s self-absorbed and we get glimpses of her personality in two scenes. She’s the only one that has a personality and she doesn’t look the same as everyone else (this will be important later because she’s the only one I remember for her personality and her clothing style). She's hanging out in the jacuzzi… alone… at night… This girl is taking selfies and happens to see our murder-loving bear in the background of her photo. Why does she shout out to ask who is there? She assumes it’s Maria’s stalker, but even if it was… she chooses to stay outside and she gets back into the jacuzzi after getting out of it to yell in the general direction of Pooh. Lara gets jumped by Piglet and Pooh and she later wakes up to the realization that she’s tied up and in a dire situation. (For those that have seen it, I fought really hard not to put "she's in a 'tire' situation. If no one finds that hilarious, I did and that's all that matters lol.)
This scene was gruesome. Initially, it seems like she’s going to get taken out by a sledgehammer, but this kill is far from ordinary. Pooh likes to use everything at his disposal and this includes a car (where he got the keys, I don’t know). Tina experiences the slowest, most painful death as Piglet hold her down with the weight of the sledgehammer. Pooh opts to run the car over Tina’s head in the slowest way imaginable and the effects used in the close up of this death will live rent free in my head (against my will). This scene was interesting because Tina seemed heavily focused on her looks and how she is perceived. Her attack seemed to target the very thing that she was so mindful of. I won’t go into detail about how she looks after this because I recommend you see these practical effects for yourself.
After Lara’s death, Pooh and Piglet seem to make their way back to their camp and we see Christopher Robin tied up and beaten. He pleads for this all to stop, but Pooh only further beats him after reminiscing about the good times and Christopher’s promise of never leaving his friends. I wonder if Christopher ever told them he was going to college or if he just… left? I could understand the abandonment felt by his animal friends because he essentially ghosted them if he said nothing to them. Who would’ve thought that this feeling of abandonment would devolve into murderous rage though? Christopher definitely never expected this...
Lara’s friends find her bloody remains and rightfully freak out over it, but they do so little to escape. Somehow they all meet up in the same area, seeing the words “Get Out” in blood. They spend a long time discussing what they should do and this was where I began getting frustrated. It felt odd and out of place because this scene went on for a long time. I felt like I zoned out during their conversation and all I remember being said was something about Maria’s stalker. Even if this was Maria’s stalker, why are we taking so long to find phones? Call the police? Find a weapon? Run away? Find some sort of escape?
Two women, Zoe and Alice, are the only two that have weapons until Maria realizes she has a gun. This is where they inevitably split up (Horror 101? Never split up). Maria and Jessica run upstairs to look for a gun that they can’t immediately find and I asked myself what the point of a gun is if you don’t know where you put it? While they’re doing this, Zoe and Alice find themselves in the pool area and stop to tell each other how much they mean to each other? They full stop, no walking and talking, no running and focusing on an escape… I had very little care or connection to any of these characters, but the semblance of care that I had was gone when this scene happened. The movie had gone downhill from here because the characters are so insufferable and I constantly questioned whether or not they actually wanted to live. They were all so unbelievably stupid in the sense that they’d do something to stall their escape and then they’d become surprised when Pooh Bear or Piglet would find them?
At this moment, I also found myself so confused at which set of characters I was staring at. A few people that were watching it with me felt the same because we all realized that the two sets of characters were essentially wearing the same thing. We were mixing the characters up and spent some time focused on who was who as opposed to actually engaging in the film. I know that this was a lower budget film, but the actors could’ve probably picked something from their own closets as opposed to having two sets of characters wear the same thing. We joked that maybe everyone showed up to filming in their own clothes and probably shouted “Twiiiiinsies!” upon seeing each other on set. If that actually happened though, that would be wildly hilarious. Anyway, these are the characters and their outfits:
Moving on, Alice and Zoe are startled when the much more outgoing Piglet intrudes on their “heartfelt” moment. I could not have cared any less about them potentially being into one another. Piglet knocks Zoe into the water and hits Alice hard enough to knock her out. Zoe stays in the water and shouts at Piglet to leave Alice alone. He has other plans with his sledgehammer as he walks past Alice and stalks towards Zoe. She is panicking in the water and instead of trying to find a shorter route to get out. Alice wakes up long enough to see Piglet bash Zoe’s head in with the sledgehammer. She passes back out immediately though, so there's no escape for her.
When she awakes, Pooh is doing what he does best, eating honey. I hated these scenes because he always drooled honey and it was disgusting when he leaned over Alice to… to what? Examine her? He stares at her for a long time before slapping the hell out of her. It knocks her out again? I’m unsure as to why the other two were killed off so quickly, but Alice was kept alive...
Maria and Jessica find their friend, sit the gun down (why?), and both work to get her free. One should’ve kept watch while the other untied Alice, but I digress. After this, they happen to find Christopher Robin and free him. He gets away and they find another prisoner, Charlene. I wonder why some people were killed off so quickly while others were just tortured. , They free her and proceed to have a conversation with her. There’s no freeing her as they talk. No one is keeping watch. This conversation goes on for so long that I was expecting someone to end up dead in this scene. We're just at a stand still and I'm still baffled at how utterly incompetent these characters are about their own lives.
Charlene gets free and we get a Hostel moment as she catches her reflection in a window. Now she doesn’t opt to off herself, but she still ends up dying not too long after. Charlene somehow gets the gun from the girls and it happened so fast that I was unsure of how they even let her grab it. The women hide as Charlene shouts for her two attackers. Piglet shows up and she shoots at him (and misses), quickly realizing that the gun only had one shot… I don’t understand why it only had one shot and Maria didn’t seem to carry any extra ammo with her. I wondered what she was really going to do with that gun.
Charlene dies and I don’t even remember how. Her character and these scenes felt unnecessary. Maybe it was to further explain how Pooh and Piglet found different ways to deal with the people who traversed the 100 Acre Wood. But, Charlene’s scenes felt like they were only put in to extend the runtime. The girls could've had this interaction with Christopher Robin and it wouldn't have made a difference. They could've still missed the shot, they could've still scattered with someone being left behind to deal with Piglet (I'm getting ahead of myself). Charlene was not needed. She could've been wholly left out of the story and it wouldn't have mattered.
I get a little confused at what’s happening after Charlene’s death and it’s because of the outfits of the characters. I’m going to explain this as best I can, but I don’t know who does what in these upcoming scenes….
Piglet get smacked in the head with a sledgehammer, but just once. Two women run away as the third tries to take care of Piglet. Pooh begins chasing the other women and they try to hold him back with fire. He isn’t afraid and continues to stalk towards them. They have nothing to defend themselves and end up just running through the woods with the bear following behind them. When Piglet wakes up, he is bludgeoned until his death. This scene also takes awhile and I expected the woman to get herself caught up somehow (we were still hoping for another woodland friend to show their face, but spoiler alert… it’s just Piglet and Pooh). Piglet lets out a final scream that can be heard by Pooh.
Pooh runs back to see his friend and the other women also run back to help their friend? I feel like the chase scene was a waste if they were all going to run back. I also thought that this was silly because the women who had escaped could’ve just kept running. I understand that they didn’t want to leave their friend behind, but I had assumed that she was going to get caught by Pooh. Their mistake of running back eventually costs them.
All three are reunited for a brief moment before they realize Pooh has found them. Alice decides to stay back to distract Pooh and… well…. this was her downfall. Our bear takes her out Michael Myers style:
Maria and Zoe eventually run into a group of men hanging out by their truck and try to ask them for help. They initially think that the women are on drugs as they explain what’s been hunting them all night. Pooh makes his way to them and the men taunt and stalk towards Pooh, asking him why they’re picking on the women. Their deaths were the funniest deaths of the film, but they did put up somewhat of a good fight. I can’t quite remember how two of them die, but one dies due to Pooh’s underutilized bees. This idea is so creative and those of us that watched together kept saying that this would be such a cool Mori if Pooh was put into Dead by Daylight. The other man was killed by Pooh’s killer slap, the same one that knocked out Alice earlier in the movie. It knocked 1/2 of this man’s face off.
While all of this is happening, Maria and Jessica are watching and don’t begin looking for the keys until two-face makes his way to them. Those of us that were watching had assumed that the keys were with one of the men. This would’ve been so unfortunate, but somehow the keys were in the car, just hidden? I was confused here because the lights were on throughout the entirety of that fight. It had also seemed like the men were driving or were about to drive, so why weren’t the keys in the ignition. It would’ve been a better scene if the women realized that the keys were with one of the men. But, they end up being able to drive and choose to run Pooh over. Instead of him being injured, he somehow ends up on the back of the truck. He slowly makes his way to the roof and terrorizes the women further.
All they had to do was slam on the breaks, but instead they continue driving until they crash into something. I’m unsure of if it was a building or not. The two pass out, but when Maria wakes up, she sees Jessica being dragged away by Pooh. He drags Jessica in front of the truck as Maria watches on in horror. Pooh pulls Jessica’s head from her body and Maria scrambles. Pooh somehow captures her and before he can inflict damage, Christopher Robin rams a car he’s driving into Pooh, crushing him between that car and the truck that Maria was driving. Somehow Maria was unharmed in that, but I’m not going to question it. At this point in the film, I was working on not being so upset by it.
Christopher and Maria attempt to get away, thinking that Pooh is dead. This was their mistake because Pooh was most definitely alive and walks towards them as Christopher struggles to help Maria. Pooh grabs Maria and Christopher only pleads for Pooh to stop. I understand that he has nothing to defend himself with, but he kind of just stares on, much like when his fiancée was captured. I thought that Maria was going to be our final girl, but I was mistaken because Pooh slits her throat. The crazy thing is, Pooh finally has a line after not speaking throughout the entire film and I hated everything about it. Christopher asks him something along the lines of “Why are you doing this?” to which Pooh responds “You left.” before killing Maria. It would’ve made a better statement if Pooh said nothing as he killed Maria, I think. The voice Pooh has is horrendous and it would’ve been more menacing or more captivating if he had said nothing.
The film ends with Christopher getting away.
My Final Thoughts
I personally hated this film once the end credits rolled. The characters were flat and the fact that they had zero survival skills made it hard for me to feel anything for them. They all died and I didn’t think much of it besides the fact that one of them had a pretty impressive death scene. Every choice they made further fueled the annoyance bubbling inside me and I get that this film was supposed to be a horror/comedy, but it wasn’t really funny. The deaths were a little too serious for me to find it funny and the tone at times seemed like it took itself too seriously. The characters genuine stupidity was also too infuriating for me to enjoy this in a horror sense initially. The only "funny" moments were when we could catch a full-body shot of Pooh running through the woods.
After having seen the second Blood and Honey film, my perception has changed. I won’t explain here, but I’ll touch on why when I go into a deep-dive on that film. I have to do a little research as to what the writers and directors were going for to see if my theory is correct. If the first movie was bad on purpose, it's kind of genius.
As a standalone film, it’s not good. I don’t recommend watching this and I give it a 1 out of 5 rating. I honestly can’t think of a good thing to say besides the fact that there was one gruesome kill that was cool and there were a few funny kills, but they were funny because they were so random. I stand by the fact that bees and Pooh’s powerful bear slap could be wonderful Moris in Dead by Daylight. I wouldn’t even be mad if my character got taken out by a big cuddly bear.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. If you’ve read this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read through my thoughts on this. What’re your thoughts on the film if you’ve seen it? Do they differ from mine? Also if you've seen both films, please only speak about the first film as if it's a standalone. What were your initial thoughts before having seen the second one? I just don't want anyone to be spoiled by the second one.
I would also like to ask… would you guys be interested in seeing my un-edited notes on this film? I referred back to them while writing this review and found them funny. It’d be a long read, but maybe it can be a future post.
Catch you guys on Sunday for next week’s poll!
🔪Versa
Pooh subdues Charlene and pours honey on her before Piglet mauls her to death.