Main cast: Scott Chambers (Christopher Robin), Tallulah Evans (Lexy), Ryan Oliva (Winnie-the-Pooh), Teresa Banham (Mary Darling), Peter DeSouza-Feighoney (Young Winnie-the-Pooh), Alec Newman (Alan Robin), and Simon Callow (Cavendish)
Director: Rhys Frake-Waterfield
What is Alec Newman doing in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2? Did he lose a bet, or does he need money that badly? If it’s money, just open a GoFundMe or something!
Still, I have to give this movie credit where it’s due: it tries to have a much stronger story than the previous movie, even if “story” in this case feels like a clumsy cobbled-together elements from other more established horror franchises glued together by a string of implausible coincidences.
I know the people behind this movie want to create an entire franchise of horror takes on fairy tales, and it’s like they realized that they needed to get serious a bit and put more substance into the movies that will make up this franchise. I am not complaining, though, as in this aspect, the story of this one is a major improvement over the barely-there one in the previous movie.
There are some major retcons done in the background story of Christopher Robin and the homicidal animal-things this time around. Instead of just friends, they are now linked together by some Five Nights at Freddy’s plot thread that also includes genetic mutation by a mad scientist—yes, Pooh and friends are now undead genetically-modified human-animal hybrids—and yes, it sounds dumb but you know what, let’s just roll with it or we’ll still be puzzling about this come Christmas.
Anyway, after the events in the previous movie, poor Christopher managed to escape Pooh and friends and flee to his parents’ place in Ashtown. Everyone believes that he murdered those women in the previous movies, but because there is no direct evidence linking him to those deaths, he’s now living as some bargain bin version of the protagonist in Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Meanwhile, Pooh and Piglet seek shelter with Owl and Tigger, and Owl is adamant that they should head over to Ashtown to deal some murderous payback to Christopher and his kind. Eventually, they do, and yay, it’s time to paint the town red!
As I’ve mentioned earlier, the retcons make little sense when taken as a continuity from the previous movie, so it’s best to just assume that this is a standalone movie in its own right. After all, Christopher Robin is played by a different actor this time around, so it’s begging people to forget what happened in the previous movie as much as possible.
When viewed from that account, I suppose this one is an admirable effort to upgrade the planned franchise, even if these people did that by heavily cutting and pasting elements from other movies into this one in a rather inelegant manner.
The problem with this approach, though, is that the movie needs to demonstrate that it can elevate the stuff it has borrowed. Well, it doesn’t do that. If anything, the “horror” part of this movie is easily its weakest aspect, because the kills are boring. I’ve seen them so many times already, and they just come off this time as boring, lacking in creativity, and frankly yawn-inducing.
Maybe it’s a budget issue holding these people back, but there is not enough gore to compensate from the very boring kills, so the whole thing ends up being a yawn instead of a thrill ride.
Still, I can’t help liking this one, although that is mostly because it tries to be a better sequel than the previous movie. The bar is indeed low considering how forgettable the previous movie is, but when compared to that one, this movie is indeed a marked improvement.
So yes, I’ll be nice this one and give it three oogies because of this!
