WhenWinnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honeywas announced, the internet greeted it warmly. The film immediately follows the end of Disney’s exclusive hold over the material. With the property in the public domain, the director swiftly put together an indie slasher starring the characters. However, he’s also pitched multiple other versions of the same concept. It’s hard to imagine people getting excited about the concept more than once.
Thepublic domain is oneof the coolest concepts in media. Right now, anyone can put Dracula, Cthulhu, and Sherlock Holmes into any story they want without owing anyone a dime. It’s great to see Disney lose its iron grip on another property, and it’s cool that anyone could now put together whatever they want from the art that came before them. While that rule ensures every use is legally valid, it doesn’t make them all interesting.
RELATED:Pooh And Piglet Go Evil In The New Blood And Honey Trailer
Everyone knows the story by now. On the first day of 2022, A. A. Milne’s 1926 children’s bookWinnie-the-Poohentered the public domain in the United States. Disney still holds exclusive rights toits versions of the characters, but the original creatures that inspired those cartoons are now fair game for anyone. Three months later, writer/director/co-producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield began crafting his directorial debutWinnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. The film was shot over 10 days in the Ashdown Forest, the area of East Sussex that inspired the Hundred Acre Wood. The trailer went viral online, leading to an increased budget and the promise of many more similar properties. Frake-Waterfieldnow has aBambihorror filmin the works, along with an adaptation ofPeter Pan. As these become more common, the novelty is likely to wear off.
The entire draw ofBlood and Honeyis the shock value of seeing characters that were designed to appeal to kids in situations they shouldn’t typically occupy.The plot follows Poohand Piglet after Christopher Robin goes off to college. Instead of being anthropomorphic stuffed animals, like they are in the book, they’re apparently real feral creatures. As such, they eat Eeyore for sustenance and kill any human they come across as vengeance for Christopher abandoning them. It’s a by-the-numbers slasher movie. Theappearances of the killersand the names of the victims are the only elements affected by the supposed source material. It would take around half an hour of editing to put a different story in the same position. It’s only amusing as a novelty, and even that interest will fade fast.
People seem to be interested inBlood and Honeyfor two reasons. Neither of those reasons is the quality of the film. People enjoy it as an expression of freedom in creativity and as a thumb in the eye of Disney. For Disney’s part, they seem to have ignored the film entirely. As a creative expression though, it’s a bit strange to see it lauded for its originality. What’s the key difference between this and something embarrassinglike 2017’sThe Mummy? All Frake-Waterfield did was take the trappings of an old story and torturously stretch them over an utterly generic slasher film. The genre is already formulaic,Blood and Honeybrings nothing new to the table. What’s so imaginative about putting familiar faces onto a genre that’s been chasing its own tail since the 80s? The only interesting thing about it is that the filmmaker using a marketable name to sell an otherwise forgettable film is doing it without a massive studio behind him. That might be enough to gain attention once.
There are a million versions ofBlood and Honey. Not a millionWinnie-the-Pooh-themedhorror films, just an infinite number of works that introduce horror elements to a kids' property. The all-consumingFive Nights at Freddy’sempire andits countless knock-offsare just scary versions of Chuck E. Cheese’s animatronics.The Mean One, released last year, is the same concept applied toHow the Grinch Stole Christmas. There is a near-endless supply of adaptations of Grimm’s fairy tales that reintroduce the unpleasant elements that Disney removed.Red Riding Hood, Gretel and Hansel, Alice: Madness Returns, and the list goes on and on. As Frake-Waterfield adds more to the pile, they’re almost guaranteed to become as tired as any other overdone trope.
Anyone absolutely should be allowed to make art out of other art. The public domain is wonderful because it allows new voices to paint with the colors that inspired them to take up the craft. It can be very cathartic to see someone finally get their hands on a toy someone else has been hoarding for decades and immediately do something different with it.Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,Bambi: The Reckoning, andPeter Pan: Neverland Nightmarearen’t necessarily the best arguments for the public domain as a force for creative good, but they are just as valid as any other use. Even if people get sick of them by the second outing.
