Shocking surely no one out there, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey has been slammed as nothing more than an utterly awful and uninspired cash grab by multiple critics after its debut.
Reinventing the beloved children’s character as a grotesque serial killer who murders bikini-clad women hasn’t gone down particularly well. With its limited debut in cinemas came the first rounds of reviews and reactions. Social media reactions painted an early picture of it not being Citizen Kane, but critics have gone to town on it now.
Sitting at a truly awful 10 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, there’s a clear theme emerging in the negative reviews for Blood and Honey: it’s completely without charm or clear vision. Who’d have thought a film made on a minimal budget by a debutant filmmaker would result in something bad?
Critic Cody Leach described it as an “effortless and soulless cash grab”, while Collider’s Ross Bonaime predicts it’ll go down as one of the worst films of the year while also lamenting how something in the public domain doesn’t just mean you should do whatever you want.
The bad reviews probably won’t phase the crew behind Blood and Honey too much, with the sequel already in the works, alongside probably countless more dark interpretations of children’s characters. Maybe there’ll be some lessons learnt from the reviews of Blood and Honey, but don’t hold out hope.
Horror fans will likely view the film for the oddity, but the trope might already be played out after 2022’s The Mean One which parodied The Grinch. The only way is up from here.