Winnie the Pooh and Piglet brutally murder 11 people … is a sentence I never thought I’d write.
But that’s what goes down in the sicko indie horror film “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” which was originally set for a one-night-only run but got extended. Believe you me, even one night would’ve been too many.
How has the 100 Acre Wood legally been turned into a barbaric on-screen hunting ground that slashes the throat of childhood nostalgia?
WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY
Running time: 84 minutes. Not rated. In select theaters.
On Jan. 1, 2022, author A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories entered the public domain, which means anybody can do anything with them (so long as they avoid certain Disney trademarks) free of charge.
And so, we get the demented “Blood and Honey,” made on the cheap and starring a Pooh bear who’s been re-conceived as a woodland Michael Myers. He’s every bit as violent and undeterred as the serial killer from “Halloween,” only cuddly and yellow.
There’s the time Pooh bashes a woman’s head in and then tosses her into a wood chipper.
Winnie then drives a car over another woman’s head — and the queasy skull crushing is presented in full gory view.
The honey-loving rascal later impales a character with a long knife through the mouth.
Or, how about when he decapitates a person and then tosses her noggin onto the dashboard of her friends’ car? The windshield wipers are on. You can picture the rest.
“What happened to you?!” an anguished Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) screams.
We learn in an animated prologue that when Chris left home for medical school, Pooh and Piglet were not only upset — they became feral. When he returns five years later with his new wife Mary (Paula Coiz), the couple spot turned-over honey pots covered in blood and a grave marker that reads “Eeyore RIP” (Pooh and Piglet ate him when they nearly starved).
Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (Chris Cordell) — who look like hulking masked vigilantes from “The Purge” — capture despondent Christopher and strangle Mary to death with a chain.
Soon after, a woman named Maria (Maria Taylor) decides to rent a house in the woods with five friends to get over a traumatic event that happened to her back at home. Little do they know they’re about to be mutilated and killed by two beloved cartoons.
There’s not much more to this opportunistic public domain experiment, which feels as though it’s puffed out its runtime to match the social media hype and deliver something greater than a skit. It starts off funny — killer Pooh! — but then settles into being a sub-par slasher flick in which the bad guys don animal masks.
There are some surprisingly attractive shots in director Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s low-budget film — honey drips from Winnie’s mouth in a sadistic “Silence of the Lambs” way — and the acting is committed rather than arch (even if the dialogue is lousy-to-inaudible). Yet it is impossible to recommend to the average horror fan in search of a good movie.
Of course, the main reason people bought tickets was the novelty of seeing Winnie the Pooh go on a killing spree. And indeed he does. Still, some viewers were underwhelmed by the rampaging bear.
“I don’t want to Venmo you,” said one departing audience member to his friend in Union Square. “Dude, that was an actual waste of time!”
