Anyone who says this is the worst movie they’ve ever seen (including everyone who voted for it in the Razzies) obviously has not seen as many actually bad films as I have.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is, by no means, great… but it is very competent. Everyone involved seems to at least have an idea of what they’re doing. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since this wasn’t the writer/director’s first rodeo. He’d already cranked out a bunch of other films based on folklore and whatnot before this one happened.
Every now and then, there’s a legitimately great shot. And most of the overall cinematography isn’t awful. There are bits where I question some choices made, but there aren’t places where I’m left wondering “What the heck were they thinking with that shot?” (Which is something I find myself thinking every now and then even in some much higher-tier productions from some distinctly famous film makers.)
The effects, in general, are pretty solid, too. The kills are the right level of gooey when they rely on physical effects and the CGI blood, which is there, isn’t used to excess. The kills themselves aren’t super creative (nor do they have any real relevance to anything… there is no depth to them), but they give the audience the blood part of the “Blood and Honey” title.
Even the acting is passable. Again, I’ve seen much, much worse in many, many films. For what they have to work with, this cast does a good job. Heck, even our two mostly mute bear-thing and pig-thing slashers work well with the physical presence they exude.
The only thing I’d consider sub-par here is what passes for the plot. Because, really, there isn’t much of one. There’s a setup to explain why our beloved childhood characters went bad and there’s a setup to get the rest of the victims into a cabin the 100 Acre Wood.
As noted with the kills, there’s no depth to any of this, It’s all just to get people in front of the killers so they can splatter the forest floor with viscera. There’s not even really any serious push on the “honey” from the title… aside from Pooh slathering himself in some every now and then. (I at least expected a beehive in a corpse… because that’s something that can actually happen and it’s kind of terrifying, even without weird mutant killers involved.)
But you know what? Overall this is no worse than a bunch of direct-to-vide stuff from the 80s. In fact, the only thing it’s lacking is a bunch of random, extended, nudity… and that’s just not the thing it used to be, in general (for numerous reasons), so that doesn’t really make it any worse than those “classics.”
I’m not going to tell you that you absolute should check this out. Without the depth that there could be, it ends up being just another slasher in the woods story. Just with a guy dressed as a weird yellow bear and another as a weird pig-headed thing.
At least they’re both wearing pants…
It’s a perfectly adequate film.
The key thing about this is that it did well enough (quite well, actually: over $7 million world-wide on a budget of around $100,000) that it allowed Jagged Edge productions (and writer/director/producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield) to start a whole “Poohniverse” of public domain horror riffs. Pretty much all of them things that Disney made world-famous at one point or another, which amuses me greatly on many levels. The ones that have come after this one look like they improve in quality at least a little (likely due to having more money for them, if nothing else).
Bottom line is: if you can, go out and make whatever you want. You never know if it’ll end up a hit. (And also keep you eyes on things that enter the public domain… you can do a lot with those…)
- Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey – October 26, 2026
- Hokum – October 24, 2026
- The Cycle (2026) – October 23, 2026
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