Win­nie-the-Pooh: Blood And Honey

Film crit­ics have always had some­thing of a strange job. To me, con­text is every­thing with a film – it can make or break your appre­ci­a­tion of it. Watch­ing a peri­od dra­ma on a Sun­day after­noon as the only per­son in the audi­ence under 60? Life-chang­ing. See­ing Top Gun: Mav­er­ick in IMAX? I had to be phys­i­cal­ly restrained from enlist­ing in the Air Force.

So, after watch­ing Win­nie-the-Pooh: Blood and Hon­ey on an ear­ly week­day morn­ing with a coterie of crit­ics, I became bit­ter­ly jeal­ous of every­one who gets to wit­ness what­ev­er that movie was with three glass­es of wine inside them and part of a sold-out Fri­day night crowd. They will, I am sure, have an expe­ri­ence bor­der­ing on the religious.

Does this ulti­mate­ly mean Win­nie-the-Pooh: Blood and Hon­ey is any good? Of course not. But expect­ing a film like this to be good in the con­ven­tion­al sense is a fool’s errand. Clear­ly, nobody in the pro­duc­tion expect­ed it to be good so why should you? It is a tech­ni­cal­ly incom­pe­tent slash­er movie that deliv­ers on the sim­ple promise of see­ing Win­nie-the-Pooh and Piglet-shaped fig­ures hack some peo­ple to death for 80 minutes.

The thrill undoubt­ed­ly wore off the sec­ond Blood and Honey’s goofy mar­ket­ing went viral. But it is – in my eyes – a bet­ter bear-themed hor­ror movie than, say, Cocaine Bear. That film was fatal­ly self-con­scious of its inher­ent silli­ness where­as Blood and Hon­ey just cracks on with it because it has no con­science to speak of. Besides, it cost 0.333333333% of Cocaine Bear’s bud­get so for­give me for sup­port­ing inde­pen­dent British cinema.

The mar­ket­ing major­ly buried the lede by not dis­clos­ing that the film’s pro­tag­o­nists are a group of vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal dark-haired huns. I can’t remem­ber their names but I think the main girl was called Maria (Maria Tay­lor) and she, in an effort to escape her per­func­to­ri­ly-explained past trau­ma, sets off for a coun­try get­away with her girl­friends. Nat­u­ral­ly, their Airbnb hap­pens to neigh­bour the Hun­dred Acre Wood where a blood­thirsty and aban­doned Win­nie-the-Pooh and Piglet (but not Eey­ore, he died) lie in wait.

On the most basic lev­el Blood and Hon­ey works as a slash­er movie. That’s about it. The rest of your enjoy­ment derives from watch­ing some­thing so hasti­ly and clum­si­ly assem­bled that it almost resem­bles a home movie. Blood and Hon­ey excels when you pre­tend every­one involved decid­ed to make it for their own per­son­al enjoy­ment. There are great plea­sures to be found in this film, none of which seem to be intentional.

Blood and Hon­ey is not a good film but it is the type of film where scenes spec­i­fied to take place at 3am are filmed in obvi­ous day­light. It is a film where sup­pos­ed­ly heavy met­al chains fall away at the slight­est touch. It is a film where char­ac­ters scream, ​“Why are you doing this? What’s hap­pen­ing?” five min­utes before the end. At one point Win­nie-the-Pooh karate-chops a man’s hand off. You could not pay me to whole­heart­ed­ly con­demn a film that includes a scene of Win­nie-the-Pooh karate-chop­ping a man’s hand off. So, I won’t. Sue me.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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