winnie the pooh horror movie reviews

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Love Lies Bleeding Link to Love Lies Bleeding
• Problemista Link to Problemista
• Frida Link to Frida

New TV Tonight

• Nolly: Season 1
• In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon: Season 1
• The Long Shadow: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Palm Royale: Season 1
• Alice & Jack: Season 1
• X-Men '97: Season 1
• Davey & Jonesie's Locker: Season 1
• Photographer: Season 1
• Top Chef: Season 21

Most Popular TV on RT

• The Gentlemen: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Manhunt: Season 1
• Apples Never Fall: Season 1
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Season 1
• Masters of the Air: Season 1
• The Regime: Season 1
• The Signal: Season 1
• Invincible: Season 2
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Manhunt: Season 1 Link to Manhunt: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now

Best Horror Movies of 2024 Ranked – New Scary Movies to Watch

Women’s History

Awards Tour

Weekend Box Office Results: Kung Fu Panda 4 Barely Edges Out Dune

TV Premiere Dates 2024

• Trending on RT
• Play Movie Trivia
• The Rotten Tomatoes Channel

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey

2023, Horror, 1h 40m

What to know

Critics Consensus

Oh, bother. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey has its moments, but they aren't enough to make up for the weak plot, uneven acting, and general lack of real horror or humor. Read audience reviews

You might also like

Where to watch winnie-the-pooh: blood and honey.

Watch Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey with a subscription on Peacock, rent on Vudu, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Vudu, Prime Video, Apple TV.

Rate And Review

Super Reviewer

Rate this movie

Oof, that was Rotten.

Meh, it passed the time.

It’s good – I’d recommend it.

So Fresh: Absolute Must See!

What did you think of the movie? (optional)

You're almost there! Just confirm how you got your ticket.

Step 2 of 2

How did you buy your ticket?

Let's get your review verified..

AMCTheatres.com or AMC App New

Cinemark Coming Soon

We won’t be able to verify your ticket today, but it’s great to know for the future.

Regal Coming Soon

Theater box office or somewhere else

By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie.

You're almost there! Just confirm how you got your ticket.

Winnie-the-pooh: blood and honey videos, winnie-the-pooh: blood and honey   photos.

The days of adventures and merriment have come to an end, as Christopher Robin, now a young man, has left Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet to fend for themselves. As time passes, feeling angry and abandoned, the two become feral. After getting a taste for blood, Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet set off to find a new source of food. It's not long before their bloody rampage begins.

Genre: Horror

Original Language: English

Director: Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Producer: Rhys Frake-Waterfield , Scott Jeffrey

Writer: Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Release Date (Theaters): Feb 15, 2023  limited

Box Office (Gross USA): $1.6M

Runtime: 1h 40m

Distributor: Fathom Events

Production Co: Jagged Edge Productions

Cast & Crew

Craig David Dowsett

Chris Cordell

Amber Doig-Thorne

Natasha Tosini

Richard D Myers

Simon Ellis

Maria Taylor

Nikolai Leon

Christopher Robin

Natasha Rose Mills

Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Screenwriter

Scott Jeffrey

Stuart Alson

Executive Producer

Nicole Holland

Vince Knight

Cinematographer

Andrew Scott Bell

Original Music

News & Interviews for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey

What to Watch This Week: Ant-Man and the Wasp , Picard , and More

The 5 Most Anticipated Movies of February 2023

Critic Reviews for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey

Audience reviews for winnie-the-pooh: blood and honey.

There are no featured audience reviews for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey at this time.

Movie & TV guides

Play Daily Tomato Movie Trivia

Discover What to Watch

Rotten Tomatoes Podcasts

Oh no, 2024's most cursed horror movie is spawning an MCU-like universe starring Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, and Peter Pan

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is rounding up all your favorite IPs for the Poohniverse

From the makers of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey comes, erm, the Poohniverse.

Jagged Edge, the studio behind the b-movie that made over $5 million on a $50,000 budget, is taking Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet, and teaming up with Pinocchio, The Mad Hatter, Sleeping Beauty Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and Bambi in order to create a supervillain team made up of horror versions of beloved childhood characters.

"As horror fans, we would love an Avengers that is all villains," Jagged Edge's actor-producer Scott Chambers explained to Variety. "It’d have Freddy Krueger, Jason, Halloween, Scream, all of those. Obviously that will never happen, but we can make it happen in our own little way, and that’s where this film has been born."

Jagged Edge also plans to release standalone films Bambi: The Reckoning, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, and Pinocchio Unstrung, which will all contain connections to the newly formed shared universe.

"We’ve got access to all these concepts so it’s like a self-contained bubble and we can do what we want with them," says Rhys Jake-Waterfield, director of Blood and Honey and Blood and Honey 2. Jake-Waterfield is now set to direct Poohniverse. "So yeah, it’s really exciting."

Just in case you were confused, this particular universe appears to be separate from the one that contains Horror Steamboat Willie , Cinderella's Curse , and Peter Pan Goes to Hell, with each feature being helmed by a different studio.

Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble is set to hit theaters in 2025. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is out March 24 in the UK. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2024 and beyond.

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for GamesRadar+ currently based in the Midwest. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent's Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.

Kung Fu Panda 4's Jack Black likens Po to Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi as he teases future of the franchise

Anne Hathaway explains signing on for upcoming age-gap rom-com: "I want to have fun, dammit"

RuneScape creator says his new game is "not a traditional MMO where you play, get to the endgame, and that's where the game actually starts"

Most Popular

By Hope Bellingham 18 March 2024

By Hirun Cryer 18 March 2024

By Lauren Milici 18 March 2024

By Molly Edwards 18 March 2024

By Catherine Lewis 18 March 2024

By Amy West 18 March 2024

By Emily Garbutt 18 March 2024

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, winnie-the-pooh: blood and honey.

Now streaming on:

"Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" sorely wants a spot in the "so naughty it's good" category, by showing you what it would look like if Winnie-the-Pooh became a sadistic killer alongside his face-devouring friend, Piglet. This English production, making its way to 1,500 theaters in America this week, aims to take the piss out of one's childhood nostalgia, which is mirrored here by what happens to poor Christopher Robin ( Nikolai Leon )—he returns home from college to find out that his boyhood pals have become human-hating murderers. Before some flashy, forensic opening credits straight out of 2000s horror, they make their first kill. But for how shocking this may sound in getting one over on anyone offended by its concept, it's not the perverting of A.A. Milne's work that's any part of the problem. As a horror and a comedy, "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" has no rhythm with either, and it's too dim to be worthy of a curious look. Writer/director/editor Rhys Frake-Waterfield wants you to "turn your brain off," as the moviegoing adage goes, but that's hard to do when its poorly lit sequences constantly force you to squint to decipher its nighttime terror in 100 Acre Wood.  

The best joke is that you see Pooh's round ears and button-nose in ominous shots where Leatherface or Michael Myers are supposed to be, with red overalls and a rubbery mask that's frozen to a type of honey-suckling grin. Judging from the mildly amused reactions of other people in the theater, those reveals are the film's most consistent chuckles, and I agree. You never get tired of seeing Frake-Waterfield's version of Pooh and Piglet (portrayed by Craig David Dowsett and Chris Cordell , respectively) pitched as towering psychopaths, but the movie also makes you wish it tried harder.  

"Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" struggles to be notable outside of its irreverent IP comic relief, despite simplifying itself. Take away the Pooh and Piglet stuff, and you have a ho-hum stalker thriller that treats its one-dimensional characters as punchlines for gory scenes its budget can't fully deliver on. In this case, five women ( Maria Taylor , Natasha Tosini , Natasha Rose Mills , Amber Doig-Thorne , and Danielle Ronald ) have gathered at a remote cabin near Pooh and Piglet's kingdom of sadism. Frake-Waterfield doesn't even humor us with much development or care for these women; we know that one of them, Maria Taylor's Maria, is traumatized by a man who stalks her back in the city, and this is her getaway. "Blood and Honey" then lumps her in with other easy targets for easier shocks: the women are as gullible as anyone deeply offended by this movie, and we're meant to laugh at each poor choice these characters make. 

A sentence I never thought I'd write: Pooh and Piglet proceed to terrorize these women, with a few other victims thrown in, sometimes in a way akin to ritual sacrifice. It only becomes uneasy when it becomes so obvious. It's a lot of women—many with black hair, curiously—experiencing head trauma. Oh, bother.  

Whether one finds this movie's promise giddy or gross, the terror scenes are much too drawn out, stuffed with extraneous beats that create dead air. There are many improvised-looking of scenes of stalking or screaming for help, in which everyone is stuck waiting for a greater storytelling vision to round out the joke. One scene that lacks self-awareness has Piglet walking in a shallow indoor pool, wielding a sledgehammer at his prey. A funny set-up, but the scene itself can barely move. The whole project has that baffling defect—how do you cut a premise like this down to the bone, with Pooh and Piglet more or less rampaging for 85 minutes, and make the movie so boring?  

By being finished and distributed, "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" will already be a win for some (and a sequel has been announced). Some will want to see what a blood-splattering Winnie-the-Pooh movie looks like, serviceable filmmaking be damned, and I get it. (We find Super Bowl commercials enticing in the same way, but maybe not at feature length.) But if witnessed at all, Frake-Waterfield's film is the kind of dismal curiosity best experienced with a friend, to be briefly amused, or to commiserate with. Preferably if they're paying for it.  

Now playing in theaters. 

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Now playing

Kaiya Shunyata

Peyton Robinson

Brian Tallerico

The Animal Kingdom

Monica castillo.

Simon Abrams

Film credits.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)

Nikolai Leon as Christopher Robin

Craig David Dowsett as Pooh Bear

Chris Cordell as Piglet

Amber Doig-Thorne as Alice

Natasha Tosini as Lara

Maria Taylor as Maria

May Kelly as Tina

• Rhys Frake-Waterfield

Writer (characters from the book by)

Cinematographer.

• Vince Knight
• Andrew Scott Bell

Latest blog posts

When Paul Simon Bombed at the Movies

Palm Royale is Pretty and Shallow, Which At Least Matches its Characters

SXSW 2024: Table of Contents

SXSW 2024: Omni Loop, Desert Road, Things Will Be Different

Filed under:

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey gets three things right past its clickbait premise

It’s mostly a viral provocation with no substance, but it sure brings the blood and honey

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey gets three things right past its clickbait premise

Make no mistake, the virally infamous provocation Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a dreary, dispiriting movie. It’s meant as a sort of cheeky, transgressively gruesome sequel to A.A. Milne’s classic 1920s children’s books Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner — stories inspired by Milne’s own young son, Christopher Robin Milne, and his beloved stuffed animals. Since the 1960s, those stories have been kept in the public eye by Walt Disney Animation’s animated adaptations and extensions, which mine gentle adventures out of the interactions between a chubby, hapless teddy bear and his friends.

Blood and Honey was made possible in 2022, when Milne’s copyright on Pooh expired, and writer-director Rhys Frake-Waterfield saw an opportunity for a clickbait-worthy horror twist on the character. (Disney’s copyright over its own version of Milne’s characters remains in effect.) In the horror-movie version, Pooh and his timid friend Piglet are all grown up and have become serial killers. That’s pretty much the entire movie right there: a couple of goons in grotesque Pooh and Piglet masks, silently hacking their way through a bunch of all-but-anonymous victims. There’s barely any framing or narrative; it’s just a series of repetitive murders, mostly spaced out with scenes of Pooh lurking in the woods or stalking victims.

Blood and Honey does have a few things going for it, for viewers in love with practical-effects gore and classic exploitation cinema. It isn’t an innovative movie or a particularly surprising one, but it does a few things well:

• Screaming. For people who are into horror less for storytelling tension or a sense of real threat, and more because they really enjoy watching gnarly levels of human suffering, Blood and Honey has plenty of that. The acting is often stiff and the script is repetitive, but the cast uniformly pulls off screams of agony and terror convincingly as Pooh and Piglet are menacing, torturing, or killing them. There is a lot of screaming, wailing, pleading, and begging in this movie.
• Gore. Given the movie’s micro budget, it’s no surprise that it leans on practical effects for its head-smashing, throat-slitting, face-rending violence. There’s nothing here horror mavens have never seen before, but there are sure enough close-ups of splitting skulls and dripping brains to give exploitation fans a thrill.
• Grotesquerie. Frake-Waterfield leans hard into the “honey” part of Blood and Honey , with Pooh repeatedly taking breaks from the slaughter to cover his inexpressive face in dripping, sticky slime, which he sometimes drizzles over his victims as well. The whole film has a distinctively raw “ Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974” vibe, from Pooh’s woodsy cabin filled with antlers and bones to his Leatherface-style silent, bulky menace to the focus on the grotesque. There’s plenty of stomach-churning extreme imagery designed to repulse and shock the audience, and it is effectively unsettling.

But all of that is still pretty thin grist for a movie that never gives its killers any reason to exist, or its audience any reason to root for the victims. Early in the movie, a now-grown Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) and his wife, Mary (Paula Coiz), head to the Hundred Acre Wood to reunite with the childhood pals he abandoned, and find only horror. From there on, the movie supplies Pooh and Piglet with fresh, shrieking meat at mechanical intervals.

The pacing is leaden, the visuals are murky, and there’s pretty much no reason to care about anyone on the screen, except to idly wonder how they’re going to die, and what their innards will look like when they do. The only real tension in the movie comes from a flashback, as lead victim Maria (Maria Taylor) describes a series of escalating encounters with a stalker, and for once, the audience doesn’t know exactly what’s about to happen.

But as an exploitation film built around turning beloved childhood figures into terrifying monsters, Blood and Honey is missing a lot of the core elements it needed most:

• Recognition. There’s no sense that the filmmakers behind Blood and Honey have ever read a Winnie-the-Pooh story, or have any idea what goes into one. There’s no sense of nostalgia, parody, satire, or even basic recognition humor here. Apart from Pooh and Piglet, all the other Hundred Acre Wood residents are missing in action. (A background memorial — seemingly scrawled in blood on a slat of plywood — reads “Eeyore RIP.”) Pooh and Piglet are generic baddies instead of specific ones, apart from Pooh making it clear that he resents Christopher Robin abandoning his old playmates after childhood. There’s virtually nothing meaningful to tie these characters to their past — or to the audience memories this film is supposed to be skewering.
• Dialogue. Frake-Waterfield may be avoiding having his characters talk because the voices of Disney’s Pooh characters are so iconic and memorable, and he can’t use them. Or maybe he thinks muteness just makes them more opaque and alien. But it leaves them without any sense of personality or specificity. They could literally be Leatherface fans in weird masks. Apart from brief Christopher Robin flashbacks, there’s nothing in this movie to distinguish the villains from any backwoods horror-movie psychopaths carving up intruders.
• Humor. C’mon, the idea of figures as cuddly and bumbling as Pooh and Piglet turning into slaughter-monsters is inherently a bit hilarious. And even the most po-faced horror movies usually use at least a little humor to reset the tension between dramatic sequences. But Blood and Honey is so straight-faced and unrelievedly grim that the audience is inevitably being set up to laugh at it instead of with it. Particularly during clunky moments like the one where a group of women find the words “GET OUT” scrawled in blood on the windows of their rental cabin. When one of them squeals in fear that there’s a lurking figure outside, another responds, “Whoever it is probably wrote that!”
• Any sense of purpose. The idea that innocent childhood daydreams inevitably become darker over time is a pretty poignant one. So is the idea that kids’ fantasies have weight and meaning that outlasts childhood. (Look at how much emotional mileage Pixar’s Inside Out gets with its imaginary friend Bing-Bong.) Even the vague resonance between Maria’s stalker and Christopher Robin’s murder-happy friends hints at a bigger story about the distressing feeling of other people feeling entitled to more out of you than you’re willing to or capable of giving them.

There’s no theme to Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey , no bigger idea at work, and barely even a story. There’s nothing in it you can’t get from a trailer or the poster, except the screaming and the blood — and for ’70s exploitation fans, a sequence where a woman improbably gets her shirt ripped off in a fight, so she goes to her bloody death topless.

Blood and Honey ends with another old-school touch: A title card reading WINNIE THE POOH WILL RETURN. Before that, though, Frake-Waterfield is focused on creating a whole “childhood-horror universe” focused on other public-domain classics that got Disney adaptations. Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare and Bambi: The Reckoning are already in the planning stages. That prospect is scarier than anything that actually happens in this movie.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey runs in theaters as a limited special event from Feb. 15-21, with a streaming release to follow.

All the Scream 7 news so far, including its new director

Sydney sweeney is hollywood’s most interesting young movie star and immaculate proves it, scream brings back neve campbell as franchise returns to the drawing board, again.

Welcome to the ‘Poohniverse’: ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ Team to Unite Pooh, Bambi, Tinkerbell and More in Low-Budget Horror Crossover (EXCLUSIVE)

By Alex Ritman

Alex Ritman

• Elliot Page on LGBTQ Cinema: ‘I’m Sorry, but This Is Not Niche’ 4 days ago
• Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan and Jessie Buckley Among Irish Academy Awards Nominees 5 days ago
• ‘Zone of Interest’ Sound Designer Johnnie Burn Forgot His Studio ID for Next Gig — So He Used New Oscar Statue Instead 5 days ago

Six years after “Avengers: Infinity War,” another film is vying to become the most ambitious crossover event in history, this time in the lower-budget cinematic realm.

The filmmakers behind “ Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey ” — the micro-budget slasher that sparked headlines for turning A. A. Milne’s jovial bear into a feral serial killer and made an incredible $5.2 million at the box office after costing under $50,000 to make — have unveiled “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble,” bringing together Pooh and various other beloved children’s characters gone bad.

“As horror fans, we would love an Avengers that is all villains,” explained actor-producer Scott Chambers, who leads Jagged Edge. “It’d have Freddy Krueger, Jason, ‘Halloween,’ ‘Scream,’ all of those. Obviously that will never happen, but we can make it happen in our own little way, and that’s where this film has been born.”

Many of the characters set to appear in “Poohniverse” will first feature in standalone films coming this year and falling under Jagged Edge’s version of the MCU, the Twisted Childhood Universe. Among them are “Bambi: The Reckoning,” “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare” and “Pinocchio Unstrung,” plus last year’s “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” and its sequel “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” which is being released theatrically in the U.S. on March 26. The upcoming films will include various easter eggs linking them toward the upcoming horrifying crossover.

“We’ve got access to all these concepts so it’s like a self-contained bubble and we can do what we want with them,” says Rhys Jake-Waterfield, who directed “Blood and Honey” and “Blood and Honey 2,” and will helm “Poohniverse.” “So yeah, it’s really exciting.”

Casting is to include Chambers returning as Christopher Robin, Megan Plactio as Wendy Darling, Roxanne Mckee as Xana and Lewis Santer as Tigger, with more announcements to come.

“Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble” is a Jagged Edge Production with ITN Studios and Premiere Entertainment handling sales. Stuart Alson and Nicole Holland will serve as executive producers for ITN.

“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” from ITN Studios and Jagged Edge, will be released in cinemas March 26, 27 and 28 by Fathom Events.

More From Our Brands

Tomorrow x together announce 2024 u.s. tour, rolex wants to send you to watchmaking school for free, dartmouth refuses to bargain with unionized basketball players , the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, nickelodeon star drake bell revisits childhood trauma, recreates the drake & josh set in new music video, verify it's you, please log in.

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ Review: Willy-Nilly Killy Old Bear

A childhood favorite gets a threadbare horror treatment.

• Share full article

By Kyle Turner

He’s ruthless and occasionally machete-wielding like Jason Voorhees. He’s seen surrounded by bees like Candyman. And he’s got an appetite for, as the subtitle suggests, blood and honey. This isn’t your grandparents’ Winnie the Pooh. In 2022, the A.A. Milne-created character rumbled and tumbled into the public domain . Now, with this horror take on the beloved bear, the British filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield has taken it upon himself to see how much mileage he can get out of a gimmick. As it turns out, it’s not much.

Pooh Bear and his pals in the Hundred Acre Wood have been mutated from the cuddly animals of childhood imagination into grotesque and cannibalistic monsters. When Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) abandons the creatures to go to college, their resentment toward him curdles into bloodlust, and Pooh and Piglet decide to terrorize a group of five nearly identical-looking and underwritten young women (led by Maria Taylor) vacationing in a rental home nearby. From there, the film limps from one slasher cliché to the next, with little gusto.

It’s rather disappointing that Frake-Waterfield’s movie is so threadbare. Though it is intermittently handsomely assembled, displaying the director’s eye for composition, “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” barely exploits its premise. It’s not funny enough to have anything clever to say about its gag, and it’s not exciting enough to be a competent horror movie. It hardly leans on the easiest component that should make the film: that the misdeeds of our youth can just as easily come back to haunt us.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters.

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Barry Keoghan, Paul Mescal and Cillian Murphy are among a crop of Irish hunks who have infused popular culture with big Irish energy .

Kobi Libii, the writer and director of the movie “The American Society of Magical Negroes,” has made a satire that may feel primed to be provocative. He responded to some of the discourse .

Hunting murderers, delivering babies or guarding inmates, the Danish TV actress Sofie Grabol plays women who try to keep their country safe , our critic writes.

Fifty years ago, “Free to Be … You and Me,” a TV landmark, took the revolution to the playground, showing Gen X kids that no one else  had the right to tell you who you were.

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Blood and Honey: are we ready for the Winnie the Pooh horror film?

The first trailer for the violent slasher that reimagines the world of AA Milne is somehow even wilder than expected

W hen it was first announced back in May, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was met with an amused shrug. Sure, everything else in the world is on a fast-track expressway to hell, so why not make a horror movie about AA Milne’s beloved teddy bear transforming into a living nightmare and embarking on a bloodthirsty rampage? Nice idea, good luck to all involved.

But sometimes wishes do come true. Because while Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey might have sounded like a one-gag pipe dream destined to be ensnared forever within Disney’s litigious machinery, now there is tangible proof that the thing actually exists. The first Blood and Honey trailer has been released into the world and, for better or worse, it is every single thing you ever thought it would be.

The story of the film appears to be this: like all boys, Christopher Robin one day outgrew his cherished childhood toys and left Hundred Acre Wood to explore the vast horizons of adulthood. However, in his absence, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet grew malicious and resentful, apparently feasting on the forest animals for sustenance while plotting to wreak a terrible revenge on their one-time friend. And when Christopher Robin finally returns home, a bloodbath ensues.

The trailer paints the film as a standard home invasion flick. Pooh and Piglet – while never shown face-on – seem to be adult humans in animal masks, perhaps in a nod to the forgotten Liv Tyler film The Strangers. They violently kidnap a bikini-clad young woman from one of Hundred Acre Wood’s famous jacuzzis, and daub “GET OUT” across some windows in blood. They take a girl’s eye, behead a woman in a swimming pool and then ritualistically gorge themselves on honey. Had the antagonists been anyone else at all, Blood and Honey would be the sort of zero-budget horror that would find itself aggressively destined for the bargain bin.

But the whole point of the film revolves around who the antagonists are. Up until now, Winnie the Pooh was known for his reassuring acceptance of the wider universe around him, so much so that latter-day revisionists had him pegged as a Taoist. He was a creature of the simple life; taking every new day as it came, just happy to be part of a beautiful world. There is, not that it needs to be spelled out, quite the gap between that mindset and the mindset of a hideous sentient pig-man who appears to be sexually aroused by graphic violence.

Winnie the- Pooh: Blood and Honey knows this, which is why its entire trading currency is controversy. Hot out of the gates, Rolling Stone has already called the film “childhood-ruining”, and everyone involved in the making of the film has to be hoping that this is the narrative that continues until the film’s release. It won’t matter whether the film is actually any good or not, because the whole point of it is that it gets to subvert an innocent icon like Pooh.

I’m not so sure, though. Blood and Honey has popped into existence with incredible speed. We’re promised a streaming release “soon”, but it’s important to remember that Winnie-the-Pooh only lapsed into the public domain in January. You sense that the makers were desperate to be the first film out of the gate. You don’t seize this quickly on a project, no matter how iconoclastic, unless there is real affection involved.

What’s more, the Milne estate should probably look upon this film with nothing but pride. True, they aren’t going to see any money out of it, but the simple fact that Winnie the Pooh has endured for this long – the character is now 95 years old – while remaining so indelible that he can still be an instantly recognisable cultural touchstone in a micro-budget exploitative horror movie is a triumph in itself. Deep down, anyone involved in the creative industries would be happy to learn that something they invented will be singled out for a classless gore-fest like this a century from now. I know I’d be thrilled.

Better yet, the advent of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey means that something even bigger is on the horizon. True, Pooh might be the talk of the internet now but, in 2024, Steamboat Willie becomes public domain. That’s right, unless Blood and Honey is a commercial disaster, we are just two short years away from seeing a similarly schlocky film where Mickey Mouse murders a bunch of bikini-clad women on a paddleboat. It can’t come quickly enough.

• Horror films

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey Creators Reveal Cinematic Universe, Avengers-like Crossover Movie

Winnie, you’ve become part of a bigger universe..

The makers of Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey are doubling down on their fairytale-turned-horror-movie universe with an Avengers-esque tie-in movie called Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.

Jagged Edge Productions and ITN Studios say their crossover event plans are real and set to terrify with a 2025 release window. The companies promise that the film will bring their horror movie villains together to tell a story that sees them “join forces to takedown the world,” and it's all part of a grand cinematic scheme they're calling The Twisted Childhood Universe.

"It will be complete carnage,” Blood and Honey Director and Jagged Edge Producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield said in a statement. “We are heavily influenced by Freddy Vs Jason and The Avengers. We would love to see a horror movie where the villains group together and are going after their survivors. We have some incredible set pieces in mind and some sequences I think will truly shock people. The movies we are working on now as stand alones are all building towards POOHNIVERSE: MONSTERS ASSEMBLE."

Those rushing to watch Poohniverse might want to keep up to date with the Jagged Edge and ITN’s wider world of public domain monsters. That includes yet-to-release films, such as Bambi: The Reckoning, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, and, of course, Pinocchio Unstrung, as well as established entries like Blood and Honey 1 and 2. More characters, such as Sleeping Beauty and The Mad Hatter, are also said to be on the way. Each horror twist looks at well-known characters and stories through a dark lens, and Poohniverse will surely be no different.

Frake-Waterfield is set to direct, with Blood and Honey veterans Stuart Alson and Nicole Holland tapped as executive producers. Another Jagged Edge Producer, Scott Chambers, is also back to reprise his role as Christopher Robin and is joined by Megan Plactio’s Wendy Darling, Roxanne Mckee’s Xana, and Lewis Santer’s Tigger .

Chambers released a statement saying that Poohniverse follows Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Piglet, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, The Mad Hatter, Peter Pan, and Tinkerbell in a story that is “similar to The Avengers.” He also teases that the project has a bigger budget to work with this time around.

“When you see the stand alone movies you will see the easter eggs hinting toward the crossover. Some of the villains also will not see eye to eye which will allow for some carnage within the group in some epic sequence of monster vs monster."

We gave the original Blood and Honey a 4/10 in our review . Its sequel is set for release on March 26, 2024. For more on Jagged and ITN’s killer bear, you can read up on the time a group of fourth graders were shown the film in school .

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

IGN Recommends

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)

• User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews
• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

First 'Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey' Reactions Call It "Stifled," "So Bad It's Good," and the Worst Movie Ever

Will Rhys Frake-Waterfield's horror take on 'Winnie the Pooh' become a cult classic or is it just bad?

Winne-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey , the new horror movie that turns the friendly and lovable bear and friends into slasher villains had its global release on February 15, and the first reactions for the low-budget feature are slowly making their way in across social media. If these reviews are anything to go by, the film might find itself in a spot of bother as it is being called one of the worst horror movies ever, though some predicted that, from its low quality, the film could garner a cult following similar to Tommy Wiseau 's disasterpiece, The Room .

The story of Winne-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey takes the familiar faces of the lovable bear Winnie-the-Pooh and his friend Piglet and twists them into a dark version that hungers for blood instead of honey. After Christopher Robin ( Nikolai Leon ) leaves for college, Pooh and his friends grew to hate humans after being forced to return to their animalistic instincts to survive without Christopher there to care for them. Years later, Christopher returns and, along with a group of friends visiting the Hundred Acre Wood, becomes the target of the animals' latest killing spree.

Not So Sweet

The creation of Winne-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey came about when the Winnie-the-Pooh book entered the public domain back on January 1, 2022, meaning that anyone could use aspects of anything that made an appearance in the original book for their own projects. So, of course, that means the first thing to do is turn them it blood-hungry killers! Despite the reactions from many critics, the film already has a sequel in development . What was originally meant to be a smaller release, the film ended up expanding to an extra 1,500 locations in the US following a strong box office opening in Mexico .

RELATED: Where to Watch 'Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey': Showtimes and Streaming Status

Collider's own Ross Bonaime gave the film an absolutely scathing review , also bringing up Wiseau comparisons but not in a humorous or endearing way but rather as a way to demonstrate how "atrocious" the film is. The review derides everything including its writing, directing, and acting, saying that "the whole film isn’t even fun on a cheesy level. It’s just bad and abysmally handled every step of the way." Bonaime went on to say "It’s actually almost incredible just how incompetent Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is on every level. What could've been a halfway decent dumb idea becomes a full-on nightmare of bad choices and terrible filmmaking." He gave the film an F.

Bonaime wasn't the only one that had a strong negative response to the film, as one Twitter user @LilithTwo called it the "worst movie [they've] ever seen."

Mary Beth McAndrews , editor-in-chief of Dread Central, gave a mild recommendation for the film, calling it "campy... uneven and stifled" but said to go "have fun and enjoy the ride."

Since the announcement of Winne-the-Pooh: Blood back in May 2022, the film's writer-director Rhys Frake-Waterfield has been vocal about making more cuddly characters turned killer film with the announcement of a horror film based on Peter Pan called Peter Pan: Neverland Nightmare and Bambi: The Reckoning , a horror project starring the titular deer. He aims to create an interconnected universe of childhood killers . One positive review for the film from Twitter user @genallyx was fully on board for this cinematic universe of childhood character serial killers, demanding that it come out as soon as possible.

While you would expect some positive reviews and some negative reviews, the biggest opinion of the film is that it lands in that spot as sweet as honey: the entertaining and terrible spot. Twitter users @kenbruno and @joe_fayant ended up praising the film, but in the "so bad it's good" lens of a good review. Calling the film dumb and entertaining at the same time, it is here that we see the possibility of a The Room -esque groundswell of support could be in the film's future.

Winne-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is now available in select theaters. You can watch the trailer down below.

The Makers Of Those ‘Winnie-The-Pooh’ Horror Movies Are Getting Ambitious With Their Own ‘Poohniverse’

The other weekend Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey nabbed a dubious (if inevitable) honor: It scored big at the Golden Raspberry Awards . The headline-grabbing R-rated horror picture took home five Razzies, including Worst Picture, besting the likes of Exorcist: Believer and Shazam: Fury of the Gods . Has that deterred Blood and Honey ’s makers? Of course not. Not only do they have a Tigger-centric sequel en route , but now they’re getting ambitious.

Per Variety , the makers of Blood and Honey have announced Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble , an Avengers -style mash-up, in which the murderous version of A.A. Milne’s characters will duke it out with other beloved Disney characters that have fallen into the public domain. Among them are Bambi, Tinkerbell, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, The Mad Hatter, and Sleeping Beauty, on top of the Pooh folks Tigger and Piglet.

Much as Marvel didn’t simply jump from the first Iron Man straight to Avengers , the Blood and Honey folks will first have to do some heavy-duty world-building:

Many of the characters set to appear in “Poohniverse” will first feature in standalone films coming this year and falling under Jagged Edge’s version of the MCU, the Twisted Childhood Universe. Among them are “Bambi: The Reckoning,” “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare” and “Pinocchio Unstrung,” plus last year’s “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” and its sequel “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” which is being released theatrically in the U.S. on March 26. The upcoming films will include various easter eggs linking them toward the upcoming horrifying crossover.

Will this ambition pay off? Will moviegoers, who turned Blood and Honey into a modest hit — $5 million to its $50,000 budget — turn out not only for a sequel but several franchise builders? Or will the trend of children’s characters milked for horror movie cash-ins get old real fast? (It better not; there are at least three Mickey Mouse gorefests en route.) One early sign of potential fatigue is if people turn out for Blood and Honey 2 , set for release on March 26.

(Via Variety )

How Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey Became an Instant Cult Classic Despite Terrible Reviews

Here's how Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey gained cult classic status despite poor reviews from critics.

• Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey subverts a classic Disney character, turning the beloved bear into a malevolent slasher killer, which creates an irresistible draw.
• The movie's high camp and kitsch factor, including amateurish acting and ridiculous costumes, adds to its appeal among horror fans despite negative reviews.
• The film's so-bad-it's-good appeal, coupled with clever marketing that promised one type of film but delivered something different, contributed to its cult classic status and financial success.

Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was released in early 2023 and instantly earned terrible reviews. The low-budget slasher film follows iconic children's Disney characters Pooh and Piglet on a violent killing spree after they're left behind by Christopher Robin when he heads to college. Despite currently boasting an abysmal 2.9 IMDb rating, 16 Metascore, and 3% Rotten Tomatoes rating, the film has become an instant cult classic among causal and hardcore horror fans for a variety of reasons.

While the film has been skewered by critics for being cheaply made, boasting an absurdly ridiculous premise, and failing to strike a compelling balance between horror and humor, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is the type of so-bad-its-good abomination that will continue to live in infamy as the years go on. While many ingredients go into a bona fide cult classic, here's why Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey has been embraced by audiences despite the scathing reviews.

5 Subversion of a Childhood Classic

Winnie the pooh: blood and honey.

The first thing to point to regarding the appeal of the movie relates to the subversion of a classic Disney character. Indeed, almost everyone is aware of Winnie the Pooh and his pal Piglet, two iconic and lovable figures who have remained in the collective conscience of society across the spectrum of pop culture. Pooh is the kind, cuddly, lovable bear that has provided children with warm, welcoming entertainment for decades. Therefore, subverting Pooh's benevolent characteristics into a malevolent slasher killer makes for an instantly irresistible draw.

As such, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey functions as a kind of absurd must-see crossover on par with horror mashups like Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter , Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters , Snow White and the Huntsman , and other mega-popular if poorly reviewed franchise movie mashups and crossovers . The movie boasts such a silly yet intriguing premise that bad reviews have little bearing on the mass appeal of witnessing such a ludicrous affair. The movie aims to mock the childhood nostalgia of a classic Disney character and the results more or less succeed.

4 The Camp & Kitsch Factor

Another reason why Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey became an instant cult classic despite the bad reviews relates to the high camp and kitsch factor . First off, the acting in the movie has been skewered across the board as amateur at best and woeful at worst. The campy performances by Nikolai Leon as Christopher Robin, Chris Cordell as Piglet, and Craig David Dowsett have been dismissed as being ridiculously over-the-top and so completely unbelievable that one can only laugh at, not with, the overall results. RELATED: The 15 Best Cult Classic Horror Movies of All Time

The tasteless nature of turning the beloved Winnie the Pooh and Piglet into face-eating murderers resonates most through the kitschy costumes and character designs. The mere image of Pooh sporting a maniacal grin under a rubbery mask, a la Leatherface or Michael Meyers, is so offensive and untoward that one can only sit back and smile at how campy the movie becomes by the final act. What many critics note as a clear detractor becomes a strength for horror fans, with the unconvincing artificiality and unrealistic violence adding to the entertainment value.

3 A So-Bad-It's-Good Curio

Between the subversion of a classic animated Disney character and the resulting camp and kitsch quotient, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey ultimately became a So-Bad-It's-Good curiosity that made viewers flock to the film in droves. Most cult classics are terrible or financially unsuccessful by definition, gaining a small yet steady subset of fans who enjoy the film precisely for its amusing inferiority. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey fits that description perfectly.

In the lowly 1.5-star review of the film for RogerEbert.com , film critic Nick Allen opens his assessment with, " Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey sorely wants a spot on the 'So naughty it's good' list," reinforcing the sentimental appeal of the poorly made slasher. On par with such critic-proof cult curios as Troll 2, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Mac and Me, Battlefield Earth , and others, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is akin to the car crash on the side of the road that onlookers cannot avoid staring at. The movie has become a cult classic because, despite the critical misgivings, the so-bad-it's-good appeal was too attractive to ignore.

2 Grindhouse Style of Marketing

During the 1970s era of Grindhouse filmmaking, the marketing of a movie promised one thing but often delivered something else entirely. When Quentin Tarantino attempted to recreate the era with Death Proof , the trailers and promotional material indicated a relentless action spectacle. When fans saw the films in theaters and mainly witnessed characters sitting around and talking to each other, critics felt tricked by the marketing. The same logic can be applied to Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey . The movie promised one type of picture, only to brazenly fail to deliver on that promise and give viewers something different.

RELATED: 10 Lesser-Known Horror Movies with a Cult Following

To wit, in their review for IndieWire , Christian Zilko noted this mismarketing phenomenon as it relates to the movie's reception. According to Zilko:

"Blood and Honey” feels like a throwback to a simpler era of filmmaking...a time when a film could be produced, marketed, and turn a profit just by promising audiences an image they hadn’t seen before."

Regardless of the movie's qualitative merits, the movie gained viewership and notoriety thanks to its brilliant false sense of advertising. A bad movie with terrible reviews can only attain cult status through word-of-mouth and the promotional promise of delivering a specific type of film. Despite critics being duped, the result doesn't make much of a difference relative to how the public has received the movie as a throwback Grindhouse B-movie.

1 Poor Production Values & Box Office Performance

Part of the so-bad-it's-good appeal of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey derives from its glaring lack of resources and cheap production values. The movie cost a paltry $100,000 to make, and the chintzy special FX, uninspired set pieces, and rote death scenes induce more unintentional laughter than legitimate terror. The result of the poorly funded independent movie feels more like a SyFy parody on par with the Sharknado movie franchise than a bona fide studio horror release. Although critics were repelled, the movie exceeded box office expectations.

According to Box Office Mojo , Winnie the Pooh grossed $4.9 million against a $100,000 budget, indicating clear financial success despite the widespread negative reviews from critics. For such a low-budget movie boasting an absurd premise, the movie played in a staggering 1,652 theaters during the height of its exhibition. While cult classics usually do not receive that type of wide theatrical exposure, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey capitalized on its attractive premise, cashed in on its mismarketing, and overcame the scathing criticism by delivering an atrocious movie full of terrible acting and poor FX. All in all, Winnie-the-Pooh fomented a perfect storm of Blood and Honey to reach instant cult-classic status.

Stream on Peacock

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Winnie-the-pooh: blood and honey, common sense media reviewers.

Oh, bother: Low-budget gorefest is bloody, poorly made.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

No messages here, except maybe "listen to the news

Characters aren't very smart, and survival isn't t

Aside from Christopher Robin, women are central ch

Extreme blood and gore. Extreme violence against w

A woman's top comes off while she's being attacked

Sporadic use of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "ass," "fr

Pooh and Piglet are known characters who are tradi

Character has glass of white wine while in hot tub

Parents need to know that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is an extremely gory, low-budget horror movie that takes advantage of the fact that A.A. Milne's original 1926 children's book is now in the public domain (meaning the characters are no longer protected by copyright). After the novelty of the concept…

Positive Messages

No messages here, except maybe "listen to the news, and stay away from scary woods where people are regularly killed."

Positive Role Models

Characters aren't very smart, and survival isn't their strength. Turns beloved children's book characters into bloodthirsty murderers.

Diverse Representations

Aside from Christopher Robin, women are central characters and are shown to be supportive friends. But, unfortunately, they're quickly hacked to bits, apparently lacking even the most basic common sense. Two of the women friends are a lesbian couple. No notable characters of color.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Extreme blood and gore. Extreme violence against women. Dead bodies. Bloody wounds. Woman strangled with chain. Woman's head bashed, body fed into wood chipper. Woman's head run over by car: Eyeball pops out, smashed head shown. Sledgehammer to woman's head, huge spray of blood. Blade shoved through woman's mouth and back of head, pinned to wall. Severed head. Woman's neck sliced. Woman stabbed in skull. Entrails. Shower of blood. Spitting blood. Character whipped with rope. Woman repeatedly slapped. Woman tied up. Woman chained up with bloody face and swollen eye. Gun and one gunshot. Face-ripping. Arm-snapping, with blood sprays. More head-smashing. Piglet hit with sledgehammer. Pooh's face covered in blood. Exploding vehicles. Bloody meat hooks. A stalker terrorizes a woman in flashback. Woman knocked out with chloroform. Narrator explains that Pooh and his friends killed and ate Eeyore to survive. A woman has been traumatized by a stalker.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A woman's top comes off while she's being attacked; her breasts are visible for several seconds. Woman dances while wearing underwear. Woman wearing bikini takes sexy selfies. Women in revealing clothing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sporadic use of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "ass," "freak."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Pooh and Piglet are known characters who are traditionally associated with kid-friendly merchandise and media.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Character has glass of white wine while in hot tub. A character is seen carrying a wine bottle but not drinking. Dialogue: "Are you girls on drugs?"

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is an extremely gory, low-budget horror movie that takes advantage of the fact that A.A. Milne 's original 1926 children's book is now in the public domain (meaning the characters are no longer protected by copyright). After the novelty of the concept quickly wears off, it reveals itself as just another poorly made slasher movie. It's absolutely not for kids: Violence and gore are graphic and constant, with women and other characters being killed in horrible ways, smashed with sledgehammers, run over by cars, run through with blades, decapitated, strangled with chains, fed into wood chippers, and more. There's also stabbing, face-ripping, neck-slicing, arm-snapping, whipping, eyeballs popping out, and much, much more. A woman's breasts are visible after her top comes off while she's being attacked. Another woman wears revealing clothing, dances, and takes sexy selfies in a bikini. Language includes sporadic uses of "f--k" and "s--t." A character drinks wine while relaxing in the hot tub. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (8)
• Kids say (15)

Based on 8 parent reviews

TRAUMATIZING

Adults only , what's the story.

In WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY, young Christopher Robin grows up playing with his friends Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, and Eeyore in the Hundred Acre Wood. But one day he must leave for college. After that, the animals begin to starve, and decide to kill and eat Eeyore. And then they become twisted versions of their former selves, sworn to kill and eat humans -- especially Christopher Robin. Five years later, Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) returns home, only to discover that his former friends are now monsters. Meanwhile, Marie (Maria Taylor), who's been traumatized by a stalker, is advised to take a vacation, so she gathers up her friends and heads to a remote cabin not far from the Hundred Acre Wood...

Is It Any Good?

After the subversive idea of turning beloved children's book characters into brutal killers wears off, all that's left in this low-budget horror movie are boring clichés and frustrating characters. The grungy-looking Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey begins with a crudely animated prologue that explains how the characters turned into hybrid creatures, and most of the fun ends there. (Not to mention that, after the prologue, we never see Rabbit or Owl again.) There are a couple of giggles early on thanks to visuals like a swarm of bees following Pooh around, or Pooh drooling disgustingly at the thought of a snack. But it's not long before the movie becomes a showcase for hacking up young women. Perhaps the worst idea is introducing Marie as a traumatized survivor of a sexual predator who then must face yet more horror. It feels cruel. By the time it reaches its "what?" ending, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey has turned from a bizarre, controversial internet meme into a totally forgettable slasher movie.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 's violence . How did it make you feel? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of horror movies ? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?

How do you feel seeing Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet reimagined as brutal killers? Should beloved characters be untouchable? What can be gained from this kind of revisionist approach?

When the women arrive at their cabin, they reluctantly agree to put their phones away so they can spend some real time with each other. How does this turn out? When do you choose to put your phone away ?

One of the women is obsessed with posting photos of herself online, and other women wear revealing clothing. Do they represent a realistic view of body image ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 15, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : April 11, 2023
• Cast : Maria Taylor , Nikolai Leon , Amber Doig-Thorne
• Director : Rhys Frake-Waterfield
• Studio : Fathom Events
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Book Characters
• Run time : 84 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : November 14, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

The Cabin in the Woods

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Best Horror Movies

Scary movies for kids, related topics.

• Book Characters

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 Director Won't Let Bad Reviews Stop Him

Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, and director Rhys Frake-Waterfield immediately took full advantage. His 2023 movie "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" was a slasher film where an adult Christopher Robin finds himself being hunted down by his old childhood friends, Winnie and Piglet. It's a gory nightmare of a movie made popular by the gimmick of having its killers be the sweet, cuddly characters we've all grown up loving.

The movie was not   well-received by critics, mainly because it doesn't offer a whole lot beyond the initial shock value of its premise. As /Film's own Witney Seibold put it in his review, "'Blood and Honey' will disappoint fans of Pooh, fans of irony, and fans of horror. Don't bother." But despite the movie's 3% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it was still a clear-cut financial success, making $5 million at the international box office despite its reported budget of under $100,000. This is particularly impressive considering the movie was aiming to make most of its profits from video-on-demand services, not its theatrical release.

The success was enough to earn the movie a sequel, as well as enough to prevent Frake-Waterfield from worrying too much about the critics. "I've kind of brushed all that aside. You've just got to keep going," he said in an interview with SFX magazine . He also noted that the negative attention is a big part of what helped the movie do so well in the first place: "That element is what's made it blow up to the kind of scale it has. It's like lightning in a bottle. It's attracting people, making the film go crazy."

Horror's always underrated anyway

Frake-Waterfield also credits some of the backlash to the horror genre being historically undervalued and misunderstood. "It doesn't really score well with critics a lot of the time," he said. "There are a lot of really great horror films out there, some of the best-known in the genre, and yet they score so badly as films."

He's not wrong; horror movies tend to be rated much lower in general by audiences and critics alike. Much of this is just because of the contrasting tastes amongst viewers and how so many horror films intentionally end on a dark note that leaves a bad taste in the audience's mouths. The 2.9 IMDb rating for the first "Blood and Honey" is still bad even by horror standards, but when you adjust with those biases in mind, it's probably more in the 3.5-4.5 rating range.

The good news for Frake-Waterfield is that with his new "Winnie-the-Pooh" movie comes a new budget, allowing him to (in theory) make something bigger and better. "Everything has upped its game," he said, "The story is vastly improved, the performances are far, far better. The look of the creatures, the prosthetics, the gore; that's all stepped up a significant amount too." Hopefully, this will lead to a better critical response the second time around. Still, all Frake-Waterfield really cares about is whether audiences stay interested enough to fund a whole trilogy:

"My plan is to let 'Winnie 2' go out there, see what the feedback is, what people liked and didn't like, and then iterate and build on it. As the audience stays there and hopefully expands, and the budgets grow, [the films are] only going to improve further and further as we try and grow this into a really solid franchise."

‘Poohniverse’ – ‘Winnie the Pooh’ Team’s Twisted Childhood Universe Building to Mashup Horror Movie

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 hits theaters March 26, 27, 28th from Fathom Events, a sequel to last year’s viral hit that ended up making nearly $5 million at the box office. ITN Studios & Jagged Edge Productions are all-in on their “ Twisted Childhood Universe ,” but what’s the end game? As it turns out, they’re planning an Avengers-style mashup.

For starters, the growing “Twisted Childhood Universe” will feature previously announced stand-alone films Bambi: The Reckoning , Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare and Pinocchio Unstrung and introduce new characters such as Sleeping Beauty, The Mad Hatter , and Rabbit from Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey .

All of these characters will come together in Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble in 2025 when the monsters join forces to take down the world.

Blood and Honey 2 ‘s end credits will feature a first look at the upcoming Poohniverse .

Producer of Jagged Edge Productions Rhys Frake-Waterfield explains, “It will be complete carnage. We are heavily influenced by Freddy vs. Jason and The Avengers . We would love to see a horror movie where the villains group together and are going after their survivors. We have some incredible set pieces in mind and some sequences I think will truly shock people. The movies we are working on now as stand alones are all building towards Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble .”

Scott Chambers, Producer of Jagged Edge Production, adds “Similar to The Avengers we will follow Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Piglet, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, The Mad Hatter, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell joining forces to wreak havoc. We are working with a larger scale budget on this one and are excited for what the future will hold. When you see the stand alone movies you will see the easter eggs hinting toward the crossover. Some of the villains also will not see eye to eye which will allow for some carnage within the group in some epic sequence of monster vs monster.”

Rhys Frake-Waterfield is set to direct. Casting is to include Scott Chambers returning as Christopher Robin, Megan Plactio as Wendy Darling, Roxanne Mckee as Xana, Lewis Santer as Tigger. More casting announcements to come. Stuart Alson and Nicole Holland serve as Executive Producers.

Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble  is a Jagged Edge Production with ITN Studios and Premiere Entertainment handling sales.

Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.

You may like

‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey II’ – Exclusive Clip Showcases the Chilling Origins of Pooh

Tigger Has a Taste for Blood in This Clip from ‘Winnie the Pooh’ Horror Movie Sequel [Video]

‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey II’ – New Poster Takes a Chainsaw to Your Happy Childhood Memories [Exclusive]

SCREAMBOX Investigates UFOs and Extraterrestrials: Several Documentaries Streaming Right Now!

As someone who is obsessed with UFOS (or more recently known as UAPs) and the concept of extraterrestrials, I love a good documentary. Sightings have been on the rise since the 1940s, with the atomic bomb seemingly acting as a catalyst for new visitors. But what are these UFOs/UAPs? Is there an explanation or are they simply beyond our explanation? Why are they here? Who are they? How much do our governments know? The questions are endless and so are the documentaries that attempt to uncover the secrets behind decades of sightings and alleged confrontations.

Whether you’re a seasoned viewer or new to the rabbit hole, there’s always a handful of interesting documentaries to get your neurons firing and leave you with sleepless nights. SCREAMBOX is investigating with the addition of several docs, all streaming now on the Bloody Disgusting-powered service. Here’s the breakdown:

Aliens (2021): Beam into this unidentified streaming documentary for a glimpse into Extraterrestrial life. Aliens are hypothetical life forms that may occur outside Earth or that did not originate on Earth.

Aliens Uncovered: Origins (2021): Before Area 51, hidden deep in the desert, the military discovered a hidden gem that helped them create Project Bluebook.

Aliens Uncovered: ET or Man-Made (2022): The crash of Roswell wasn’t meant for New Mexico. In 1947, a neighboring state had 3 major sightings that were swept under the rug.

Aliens Uncovered: The Golden Record (2023): In the late 70s, the US government launched a message to our distant neighbors.

Roswell (2021): This high-flying documentary examines the July 1947 crash of a United States Army Air Forces balloon at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Theories claim the crash was actually that of a flying saucer, but what is the truth?

Also check out:

The British UFO Files (2004): Since the 1940’s the British Government has been investigating the Flying Saucer phenomenon. High-ranking military and government personnel, speak out for the first time, offering unique eyewitness accounts and inside information.

Alien Abductions and Paranormal Sightings (2016): Amazing Footage and stories from real people as they reveal their personal encounters of being abducted by Aliens.

And do not miss Hellier (2019): A crew of paranormal researchers find themselves in a dying coal town, where a series of strange coincidences lead them to a decades-old mystery.

These documentaries join SCREAMBOX’s growing library of unique horror content, including  Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, Here for Blood, Terrifier 2, RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop, Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story, The Outwaters, Living with Chucky, Project Wolf Hunting , and  Pennywise: The Story of IT .

Start screaming now with  SCREAMBOX  on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Prime Video, Roku, YouTube TV, Samsung, Comcast, Cox, and  Screambox.com .

‘The Crow’ Remake Starring Bill Skarsgård Getting First Trailer Tomorrow; Watch a Teaser Now

‘The Crow’ Remake Trailer – Bill Skarsgård Dishes Out Extremely Bloody Revenge as Eric Draven

“Z Nation” Season 6? – The Asylum Teasing a Return for the Zombie Series

‘Scream 7’: Neve Campbell Returning as Sidney Prescott in New Movie from Director Kevin Williamson

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Screen Rant

Winnie-the-pooh horror crossover event revealed by blood & honey studio.

Blood & Honey studio Jagged Edge Productions reveal their plans for a Winnie-the-Pooh horror crossover event entitled Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.

• Jagged Edge Productions plans a horror crossover event with Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble , introducing new characters and menacing twists on iconic tales.
• The studio's ambitious cinematic universe aims to follow the success of major franchises like The Avengers by uniting classic villains for carnage.
• Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble promises a unique correction to past horror crossovers, creating excitement for the future of The Twisted Childhood Universe .

Ahead of the second installment hitting theaters, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey studio Jagged Edge Productions has confirmed their horror crossover event plans with Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble . The horror franchise kicked off with the 2023 slasher twist on the iconic A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard children's book, which quickly netted a sequel development prior to the first movie's box office success. The new Winnie-the-Pooh studio also began development on further public domain-based adaptations in Pinocchio: Unstrung, Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare and Bambi: The Reckoning , all in the hopes of a crossover event.

While audiences await word on the others' release dates, Jagged Edge Productions have confirmed the crossover event will be coming in 2025 with Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble . The studio has further confirmed that the other movies, described as " standalone ", will introduce new characters Sleeping Beauty, The Mad Hatter and Rabbit to lead into their involvement in the crossover movie, which will again be directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield and the cast including Scott Chambers as Christopher Robin, Megan Plactio as Wendy Darline, Roxanne Mckee as Xana and Lewis Santer as Tigger. The filmmaker wrote about the event in the following statement:

It will be complete carnage. We are heavily influenced by Freddy Vs Jason and The Avengers. We would love to see a horror movie where the villains group together and are going after their survivors. We have some incredible set pieces in mind and some sequences I think will truly shock people. The movies we are working on now as standalones are all building towards Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.

The Twisted Childhood Universe Could Correct Two Horror Franchises' Mistakes

Frake-Waterfield was also joined by Jagged Edge President Scott Chambers in his enthusiasm for Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble , with the studio exec echoing the filmmaker's tease of Avengers -like plans for their cinematic universe. Chambers also confirmed in his statement that Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare will feature the appearance of the titular adventurer's magical companion Tinkerbell, including a role for her in the crossover. Check out Chambers' statement below:

Similar to The Avengers, we will follow Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Piglet, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, The Mad Hatter, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell joining forces to wreak havoc. We are working with a larger scale budget on this one and are excited for what the future will hold. When you see stand-alone movies, you will see the Easter eggs hinting toward the crossover. Some of the villains also will not see eye to eye, which will allow for some carnage within the group in some epic sequences of monster vs monster.

Though it remains to be seen whether the next installment, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 , can match the viral box office success of its predecessor, or if the other movies will follow suit, Jagged Edge's plans for The Twisted Childhood Universe are ambitious. They're also very promising in the sense that the studio is looking to follow in the footsteps of some of the biggest franchises in Hollywood to build its own unique world, namely the Marvel Cinematic Universe which, even in spite of its recent struggles, remains one of the most successful in the world.

By promising to have the various villains team up for carnage in Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble , though, the crossover could also correct a mistake of both Freddy vs. Jason and The Conjuring Universe . The majority of the former saw the two icons fight separately before fighting each other, while the closest the latter has come to seeing such a crossover was in Annabelle Comes Home , which still didn't go as far as Poohniverse promises to. With over a year and multiple movies remaining until the event, it will be interesting to see if Jagged Edge can deliver on their ambitious plans.

The first Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is available to stream on Peacock.

Source: Jagged Edge Productions

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2

The sequel to the horror parody of A.A. Milne's children's story, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, picks up shortly after the first film's events. The new movie will continue the murderous rampage of the residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood, with Tigger joining the carnage as the character enters the public domain in January 2024.

Pinocchio: Unstrung

From the studio behind public domain horror films such as Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey comes Pinocchio: Unstrung. This horror-thriller film is expected to arrive in 2024 and will be a new, terrifying take on the original puppet trying to become a real boy.

Bambi: The Reckoning

Bambi: The Reckoning is a modern fantasy horror film from director Dan Allen and the team behind Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Xana and her Son Benji are involved in a car accident that puts them in the crosshairs of Bambi, a furious deer with insatiable bloodlust.

Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare

Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare is a fantasy-horror film from the team at Jagged Edge Productions, the same group behind other horror parody films such as Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. The film is a terrifying retelling of the original tale penned by J.M. Barrie in 1911.

Winnie The Pooh Horror Movie Director Blames Marvel For Bad Reviews - Here's Why

"Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" director Rhys Frake-Waterfield said the reason movie critics lambasted his micro-budgeted horror film stemmed from their need to compare it to the blockbuster-budgeted films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

When "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" hit theaters in February 2023, it was smacked with a dismal 3% critic rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.  Among the most perplexing criticisms, Frake-Waterfield recalled for  SFX , was how his $100,000 film that was shot over 10 days was being mentioned in the same breath as the MCU.

"When your film is out there like that, it literally gets directly compared to Marvel films, even though you're on 0.01% of their budget. We probably didn't have their catering budget!" the director explained. "They're substantially different. But because of the scale Winnie went to, a lot of the critics did almost like-for-like comparisons."

The negative reviews didn't appear to detract moviegoers from seeing "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey," as it earned $5.2 million at the worldwide box office. The numbers, naturally, justified Frake-Waterfield making the upcoming sequel, "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2."

Frake-Waterfield isn't done with Winnie the Pooh horror movies

While Rhys Frake-Waterfield thought some reviewers' comparisons of "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" to Marvel films were unfair, he said he has learned how to deal with criticism of his work. "To be honest, you've got to have a really, really thick skin to be a filmmaker because you get heavily, heavily criticized regardless of the means and the resources you have," he said.

Where the twisted adventures go after "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2" is anybody's guess. One idea Frake-Waterfield toyed with during his interview would be to combine the worlds of Winnie the Pooh and another famed book-turned-Disney-animated-classic — this time about an orphaned deer – that entered the public domain in 2022. "We need to see what the appetite is, but we could do some absolutely crazy stuff, like a crossover between Bambi and Winnie the Pooh," the director told the publication. "That could go incredibly mad. I need to sit down and think how mad we want to go with it! We could have Winnie riding Bambi!"

Frake-Waterfield could also conceivably do a horror film based on Steamboat Willie, who entered the public domain on January 1, 2024. However, it seems Steven LaMorte beat Frake-Waterfield to the punch, as he is slated to direct the darker take on Mickey Mouse's animated debut.