The Most Hilarious Moments From Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey, Ranked
Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey."
Before the lights dimmed at my screening of "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey," a fellow moviegoer remarked, "I hope this is terrible. I hope afterward I feel ridiculous about buying a ticket for this." I love that comment because it encapsulates the strange way audiences seem to approach the film. You kind of want it to be bad, partially because you know what you're getting yourself into. Absolutely no one enters a horror film that stars Pooh Bear expecting the next great cinema masterpiece, so the value is in the sheer bizarre nature of the concept.
"Blood and Honey" is funny when it wants to be, but it's just as often humorous when the audience can't quite tell whether a scene is supposed to play for laughs or not. Furthermore, while many sequences are outlandishly comical, it's surprising the story leans so heavily into tried-and-true horror techniques more often than it embraces parody. That said, with the basic tale starring Pooh and Piglet as serial killers, even the truly terrifying moments always have a hint of humor to them simply because of what the movie is.
It's probably best not to think too hard about it. Here are the funniest moments — intentional or not — from "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey."
11. Piglet seems to make a girl fall into a pool so he can behead her
Despite their wistful adventures together long ago, these days Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (Chris Cordell) are livid that Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) grew up and never returned to the Hundred Acre Woods. The two animals are no longer cute and cuddly. They're serial killers, hunting humans and eating them with a combination of, you guessed it, "Blood and Honey."
In the film, a group of girls rents a house that happens to be located within the Hundred Acre Woods, and Pooh and Piglet slay every last one of them. When Piglet follows Alice (Amber Doig-Thorne) and Zoe (Danielle Ronald) into the room enclosing the indoor pool, you already know what's bound to occur. There's absolutely no way all three characters will exit the pool area completely dry. Piglet will push one of the girls into the water and drown them. That's how this is going to go, right? Wrong.
Zoe falls into the pool all on her own, but that's putting it lightly. Zoe doesn't slip on anything. No one pushes her. She just kind of... flails into the pool, seeming to go out of her way to do so. Perhaps she's just so startled by Piglet squealing like a hog that she involuntarily flings her body several feet in the direction of the pool. Of course, Piglet jumps in after her and thwacks her head off with his sledgehammer.
10. Pooh Bear remembers the good old days
As Pooh looks into the mirror, he "reflects on his reflection," as Jason Segel would say. Pooh fondly remembers his treasured memories with Christopher Robin. Back then, Christopher Robin was just a young boy, and he and the animals of the Hundred Acre Woods were the best of friends. The audience sees some of these memories of yore flash upon the screen in quick succession. Cinematographer Vince Knight presents the images as bright and radiant, communicating the warmth Pooh feels as he reminisces.
This visual palette for the flashback decidedly contrasts the rest of the film's dark, gritty vibe. Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield leverages this for comedic effect when the camera cuts back to Pooh staring at his present-day reflection. Any sense of childhood nostalgia immediately vanishes, replaced by a horrific image of the nightmarish Pooh mask that actor Craig David Dowsett wears for the film. Oh, bother.
9. Pooh's only line in the whole movie
In the film's prologue, the narrator (more on that later) explains that in the wake of Pooh and Piglet's lifestyle change, both characters decided never to speak in coherent sentences again. They still perform some anthropomorphic functions usually associated with humans, but they truly embraced the nature of their origin species. One such example: only making sounds that an actual bear or real pig would make in real life.
Pooh allows an exception to this rule at the very end of the movie. In the final scene, Pooh finally has Christopher Robin and Maria (Maria Taylor) right where he wants them. Christopher Robin implores Pooh to spare their lives. "The good is still in there," Christopher Robin desperately pleads, in itself a funny line reading. He continues, "You saved me. Now it's my turn. Trust me!" Pooh is having none of it. The bear replies in a demonic-sounding voice, "You left!" and then slits Maria's throat. The audience barely has time to see Pooh let Christopher Robin go free before the movie confusingly rolls the end credits. The bizarrely hysterical moment leaves the audience wondering what they just all witnessed together ... and everyone can't help but laugh.
8. Don't mess with Pooh
Much of the humor in "Blood and Honey" stems from the creative ways the filmmakers highlight Pooh's face. They know this version of Pooh is the stuff of nightmares. They know the mask is a distortion of the beloved character the audience remembers from the classic storybooks and animated adventures. They use this positive, established association to repeatedly emphasize the fact that this is a very different Pooh ... or rather, the same Pooh, but gone completely psychotic.
When Pooh first arrives at the rental house and menacingly walks the premises, the girls aren't sure what he is. You can't blame them. He has the stature of a tall human, he's dressed like a lumberjack, and he has a yellow, rubbery face that somewhat resembles a bear. One of the girls whispers, "Did you see his face?" Another murmurs, "That did not look human." As they sneak around Pooh, hoping he won't notice them, Pooh wildly twitches his head backward, almost like a malfunctioning robot. It's a shot so creepy it's funny, further accentuating the movie's one-of-a-kind nature.
7. They who must not be named
Once the girls arrive at Pooh and Piglet's treehouse, they find Tina (May Kelly), another victim of the critters' wrath. Tina hangs by chains and part of her face appears to have been burned off or otherwise violently melted. "Who did this to you?" Without a hint of irony, Tina dramatically replies, "Pooh. Piglet." It's the line reading of the year.
For about a century, these characters have represented the zenith of childhood innocence, imagination in its purest form, and happiness in its most gleeful state. The idea that they'd star in a slasher film is bonkers, and yet more often than not, "Blood and Honey" commits to the bit. The movie doesn't wink at the audience. It employs the conventions of a horror film, and when Tina speaks the killers' names, her voice has the same gravitas as someone talking about Michael Myers or even Voldemort. She's not joking, which makes the line all the funnier. Piglet moronically squealing as he attacks Tina moments later is just icing on the cake.
6. 100 acres won't save you
"Blood and Honey" presents its opening credits against a background of newspaper clippings. The camera never lingers on any one article long enough for the audience to read it in full, but the copy we get glimpses of is fantastic. Each headline reports the news of another deadly attack. As the camera dances across more clippings, the plot thickens. The journalists seem to trace the murders to Pooh and Piglet, but they have no idea what the creatures are or what to call them.
In an editorial, one reporter ominously warns readers, "100 acres won't save you." It's one of many examples of the filmmakers subverting familiar language to which the audience previously attached nothing but positive emotions. In this context, to the in-universe readers of this newspaper, such a headline is horrifying. To the audience, though, because of the warm fuzzies that the words "Hundred-Acre Woods" has elicited for decades in our collective brainspace, the warning is a punchline.
5. Pooh ambushes a truck while trying to kill people
Step aside, "Fast & Furious," because there's a new king of Hollywood car chases and his name is Winnie-the-Pooh. In the climax of "Blood and Honey," Pooh is out for vengeance. He and Piglet murdered most of the girls already, and in retaliation one of the survivors kills Piglet. Enraged, Pooh chases after Maria and Jess (Natasha Rose Mills), the last girls still alive. Maria and Jess make a run for it in a pickup truck, but Pooh is lightning-fast. Even on foot, he catches up to the truck and lunges his body toward the cargo bed — but the girls don't know that yet.
They briefly think they've lost him. Can it be true? Is their nightmare over? Right on cue, Pooh pops up in the rear window, his face illuminated in red by the truck's brake lights. Complete with dramatic music, the moment is as campy as they come.
4. Christopher Robin yells the f-bomb at Pooh while hitting him with a car
The "Blood and Honey" filmmakers try their hand at creating scenes and setting up shots that feel typical of the horror genre. At the same time, writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield is fully aware of the audience's expectation for the proceedings to occasionally go off the rails in relation to its subject matter. He seems to ask, "What would be the most absurd situation to appear in the familiar Pooh tales?" and answers the query with unbridled silver-screen hysteria.
Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh's relationship as the audience previously knew it was kind, empathetic, and nurturing. In "Blood and Honey," it's as much of a 180 from that as it can go. Christopher Robin initially returns to the Hundred Acre Woods to catch up with his old friends, but after they kill his wife and nearly kill him, the man who used to be best friends with a bear fights for his life. Seizing an opportunity to gain the upper hand while Pooh is preoccupied with torturing Maria, Christopher Robin rams his car into his former BFF and shouts a defiant "F*** you!" This is why you came to the movies.
3. Pooh and Piglet's grave for Eeyore
Some of the best jokes in a movie speak for themselves. The scriptwriter doesn't beg the audience to pay attention to the humor, but instead invites the viewer to discover something funny within the set-dressing. One such understated joke in "Blood and Honey" isn't exactly hidden. It's actually fully visible, but as part of the set, the audience might take a moment to fully process what they're looking at.
Outside of Pooh and Piglet's treehouse, a number of items strewn about help contribute to the lore behind what's been going on with these now-villainous characters. For example, there's a skull, seemingly human. What's the story there? Behind the skull sits one of the funniest gags in the movie. A tombstone reads "Eeyore RIP," the letters written in blood and Eeyore's instantly recognizable tail attached to the grave. Moments earlier, the narrator informed the audience that Pooh and Piglet had to eat their donkey pal to survive ("and thus, Eeyore was no more"), but apparently, they still lament his loss to some degree.
2. The narrator informing the audience that Pooh and friends are crossbreeds
The film begins with sketchbook-style animation and a traditional narrator, much like the familiar Pooh movies. The cute style and warm narrator voice juxtapose hilariously with the macabre story the narrator then unspools. "Deep in the Hundred Acre Woods, a young boy named Christopher Robin came across some most unusual, adolescent creatures: crossbreeds." What a line! As the very first words the audience hears, this sentence sets a strong foundation by diverging from a lyric the audience knows and completing it with words that would have never followed the original narration in a million years.
Luckily for those who can't make it to the theater to see "Blood and Honey," its studio shared the entire prologue as a promotional clip, which Rotten Tomatoes posted to YouTube. Unfortunately, filmmakers don't continue the narration motif throughout the duration of the film. Once the prologue concludes, the story stays in the live-action, horror-inspired aesthetic. Admittedly, the sketchbook style might have felt jarring as a repeated plot device intercutting between the slasher moments. To the degree that filmmakers utilize it, though, they pull it off with solid comedic timing.
1. The horrifying reveal of Pooh to the audience
Once the movie switches from sketchbook to live-action, the audience might not know what to expect in terms of the physical appearances of Pooh and friends. Frake-Waterfield leverages that curiosity as long as he can with the opening moments of the film. When Christopher Robin and Mary first arrive in the Hundred Acre Woods, Piglet — with the build of an adult human and the face of a wild hog, tusks and all — attacks the couple and chokes Mary to death. Even if you know what you've gotten yourself into upon watching this movie, these events are overwhelming.
When another figure emerges from a darkened doorway, you have a hunch it's probably Pooh, but again the director intentionally holds off as long as he can — and he does so for the most extra reveal of all time. Christopher Robin, weeping over Mary's dead body, recognizes Pooh. Thinking that Piglet acted on his own accord and not knowing Pooh is equally feral, Christopher Robin shouts, "Please, Pooh, you've got to help me. Piglet just killed my wife!" Incredible writing. With a dramatic crack of thunder and a piercing flash of lightning, Pooh becomes visible for the first time. The build-up does its job. Even still slightly in the shadows, Pooh is terrifying. Taking this mic-drop moment to the next level, via another rhythmic flash, the screen cuts to black and the title boldly fills the frame: "WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY." Buckle up!