As The Sequel to The Most Derided Movie of 2023 Hits Cinemas, We Ask: Is it Sweet as Hunny or Just Plain Pooh? The Answer May Suprise You,…
I feel it’s important to give a bit of context to a film with such an infamous history. It’s easy to go into a sequel expecting trash because the first movie wasn’t that great. It’s an easy trap to fall into.
I didn’t want to do that. I went into Blood and Honey 2 knowing what it was a sequel two and, in explaining my eventual score, I think it’s important to bring you with me on that.
Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Producer Scott Jeffrey didn’t set out to make a a great movie with the first Blood and Honey in 2023. They’ve been very honest about what it was: a direct-to-DVD quickie that caught a zeitgeist and won a cinema release (and notoriety) that it was never designed to support.
Reviewers trashed it, Razzies were won and it seemed that the whole world was throwing poo at Pooh,… which, looking back at it, seems fair, if a little unfortunate for the guys behind the scenes.
But after making a cool £5 million in return (from a £20,000 budget and a 6 day shoot – one of the highest investment-to-return ratios in movie history), distributors ITN gave Rhys and Scott what they wanted for the sequel: time and money.
So if the First Blood and Honey was the movie they were forced to make, Blood and Honey 2 would be the movie they wanted to make. But the question remains: is it a good one?
Let’s talk about it.
A Mixed Bag,… But A Promising One.
Performances are much improved across the board. Scott himself pulls double duty, stepping into the shoes of Christopher Robin. It’s a gentle and immediately likeable performance which makes this Christopher someone to root for.
Mr. Robin is a muddle of personal scars, the most substantial being the kidnap of his younger brother when he was a child. Now faced with the barbed disbelief of most of the town, many of whom think him a murderer, this Chris comes out swinging in the final act and it’s testament to the script and performance that I felt like cheering him on.
The other human performance of particular note was Thea Evans as Bunny Robin – Chris’ younger sister: a sweet child with a habit of mutilating soft toys. Her interplay with Scott felt like the emotional core of the movie, and was beautifully played by both.
Which brings me to the first issue that I need to address.
Pooh confronts Bunny. We love Bunny and don’t want anything to happen to Bunny. Cut away – Bunny is missing! Oh no!
And then,… she’s just back at the end with a single simple line of explanation, unharmed.
Sadly, this is one of many perplexing edits and choices that let the movie down. Some – like Owl’s chase at the end – seem to be foisted by the demands of a set runtime. There are clearly entire sequences on a digital cutting room floor and that’s unfortunate because it’s so obvious.
It robs the movie of payoffs that the script sets up at the start. I might have sacrificed a few lesser kills in the Rave scene for proper resolution at the end. An end which just,… ends.
I could feel the Director’s Cut. I would have preferred it in the cinema release.
The infodump from Simon Callow’s entertainingly fruity Cavendish felt a little too long, too. The scene just about worked but there’s a rule of thumb in storytelling: whenever possible, show, don’t tell. We were told a lot. I would have preferred to discover the back story in a more organic way.
But, swinging back to the positives, there was a backstory! And a reasonably engaging one.
We discover why the Pooh Crew are out there in 100 Acre Wood, and why they were drawn to young master Robin in the first place. It’s solid, entertaining b-movie fare. It makes sense. It wraps things up. It answers questions I had.
It worked. Considering there was no story at all in the first one, that’s got to be a big tick in the “much improved” box.
Also in the “much improved” box: take a bow Pooh and Company.
The creatures themselves had a considerable upgrade, thanks to Harry Potter prosthetics team The Prosthetics Studio. Gone are the goofy, ungainly masks of the first: these new critters are entirely different beasts. Literally.
Not only do they look much, much better, they also have more personality. They speak this time round and the prosthetics allow them emote. Tigger is the insane Krueger-esque psychopath, Owl is the needling ringleader, Pooh is the vengeful unit and Piglet,… RIP Piglet. Poor piglet.
An essential demand of slasher films like this is that the audience enjoys the company of our killers and this time around,.. we kinda do. They’re still a bit hokey but this time it works. There’s even a take on Poohsticks which had the audience roaring with laughter.
We miss them when they’re not on screen.
There are a few things I’d have preferred were not on screen, though.
While the budget was a considerable increase, this was still a relatively low budget affair and there are a few things it’s best that you don’t attempt without an expensive effects studio at your back. Owl flying is one of them. Tigger’s tail is, on occasion, another.
Some of the gore, too, looked like what it was: digital. It didn’t rip me entirely out of the moment, as digital effects were pretty sparce, but I did wince.
Which brings us to the thing that gorehounds reading this really want to know: what are the kills like?
One of the clearest things on display in Pooh 2 is that the film-makers understand their audience. They’re making a horror film for the Terrifier crowd and, to this end, they don’t disappoint.
The kills are insane. Often creative (bear trap!), frequently gory and practically realised, never less than entertaining. This is gorehound fodder that makes audiences shriek, laugh and groan – often within seconds. The audience I watched it with frequently punched the air.
If I had one criticism, some of the kills felt a bit mean spirited – Chris’ Mum, especially. It just felt,… unjustly awful.
We love kills. We love to be entertained by them in these kinds of films,… but tone matters. Who you kill, when and why,… get it right and it’s a hoot. Step a bit far and it’s a bitter pill.
Largely, however, I felt that Frake-Waterfield stays mostly in the “highly entertaining” realm and that’s what’s going to keep audiences lapping up the blood and, indeed, honey.
Highly Entertaining.
And that’s where I find my reviewer’s heart going when I think about this movie: “Highly Entertaining”.
Because it was.
Rhys, Scott and writer Matt Reeves understood the brief of a good horror movie: entertain me.
At no point in the movie did I feel bored. The characters were good, the creatures were good, the acting was good, the music was excellent (major props to the returning Andrew Scott Bell, who delivers a great score!) and the kills were FUN.
This was a crew that looked into the face of the status quo – the amorphous wall of critics and naysayers – after the drubbing their first film received,… And slowly rose a finger. A team who delivered a movie that is loud, brash, heartfelt, ridiculous, vicious, gory and, yes entertaining.
Is it perfect? No. Honestly, it’s a bit of a mess in many places, and there are times when it looks as cheap as it, ultimately, remains.
But I came out of it barely caring about the faults: for the first time in many years, I came out of a cinema having had FUN. Having felt a connection with the filmmakers rather than the demands of their focus groups.
I appreciate that – it was, in a very odd way, charming – and that’s just enough to paper over the cracks and give hope for the future of the upcoming Poohniverse.