Pooh has been made over by way of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, now a hulking, silent humanoid in a dirty pair of overalls and lumberjack flannel. That means no catchphrases, no red-shirt-sans-pants ensemble, no head stuck in the pot labeled HUNNY while his legs wiggle helplessly behind him. While the 1926 short story collection Winnie the Pooh may be up for grabs, Disney’s representation of him will remain under copyrighted lock and key for nearly 40 more years, which mandated Frake-Waterfield distinguish his work from the genuine article clearly enough that no one could confuse them. Pooh belongs to the people now, though Blood and Honey can’t help raising the ontological question of how much alteration his image can sustain before he’s stripped of his essential Pooh-ness. But his feature debut, seemingly produced for $38 and improbably breaking into multiplexes with an assist from Fathom Events, illustrates the pitfalls and limitations along with the irreverent potential of the free-use-sploitation cinema sure to proliferate as more brand-name characters are freed from their contractual shackles.

He aims to scandalize with his intentional desecration of a kiddie icon, his stated goal nothing less than to “ruin everyone’s childhood”. Artists far and wide could suddenly do whatever they pleased with or to Pooh, and director Rhys Frake-Waterfield wasted no time in lunging for the lowest-hanging fruit. On 1 January 2022, the content of Milne’s first story about the menagerie of philosophically inclined imaginary friends entered the public domain and legally threw open the reinterpretive floodgates. If you assumed that it would be a blustery day in hell before Disney allowed this to happen to one of their IP superstars, you’d be right.

As a buxom influencer snaps a series of bikini selfies in the cabin’s hot tub, Piglet creeps up behind her with a chloroform rag, then Pooh drives a car directly over the incapacitated woman’s skull until the pressure makes her eyeball pop out. A warped Pooh and Piglet, the latter wielding the savage force of 30 to 50 feral hogs, loose their unslakable hunger for carnage on a cadre of young hotties unaware that their weekend getaway to the woods is about to uphold horror-movie tradition in grisly fashion. As explained by a prologue in crude stick-figure animation, a cold winter in the Hundred Acre Wood left Pooh and the rest of the gang with no choice but to cannibalize melancholic donkey Eeyore for survival, which marked a nightmarish surrender of all civility for a return to their basest beastly natures.

Winnie the pooh by aa milne