I think most people had an imaginary friend when they were children. I know I had one, though apparently mine was a different experience to most. I had my imaginary friend from the ages of 13 to 16, and instead of being an elf or a teddy bear, mine was a 27 year old blonde Bulgarian single mother of two with a voracious sexual appetite.
… but enough about me and teenage fantastical and onto the fantasies of writer and director of Imaginary, Jeff Wadlow, the director who also gave us the perfectly average but forgettable Truth or Dare from 2018 and a slasher from 2005 called cry_wolf, mostly forgotten except for the fact it starred Jon Bon Jovi as an educator.
It also had my then-horror movie crush Lindy Booth.
DeWanda Wise as Jessica
Imaginary starts with children’s author Jessica Barnes (DeWanda Wise) having a nightmare about a giant spider perusing her through a house, ironically in a scene similar to a children’s book she has written called Molly Millipede and the Blue Door.
She awakes with her partner, Max (Tom Payne) and they make the decision to move a few days early back to her childhood house, with his two daughters, Taylor (Taegan Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun), the house now vacated after her father was admitted to an aged care facility.
Chauncey
Max’s life has had some tragedy as well as his former partner has been removed from society for some mental issues, including hurting the younger daughter.
Of course, being a new parent to the girls, Jessica has trouble connecting with teenage Taylor, who also won’t let her break down the walls with the her little sister, try though she might.
Soon after moving in, Alice and Jessica engage in a game of hide and seek, during which, Alice finds a teddy bear abandoned in a hidden room in the basement, which she quickly adopts.
Jess’s Dad, Ben (Samuel Salary)
Alice and the bear, who according to Alice calls himself ‘Chauncey’, become fast friends, as any child with a plush toy would, but very soon Chauncey gives Alice a list of things to do, a list of very specific things that have to be done… but why? What are these tasks in aid of… and why are some of them destructive, even self-destructive?
Unfortunately Imaginary is a great name for this film, as its entertainment value, its acting quality, its character’s likability… all imaginary. I love a film that has an imaginary friend cause some kind of terror to the family, even though each of these films has the same stuff in it like childhood trauma, a blended family, a new house, a young child who feels disenfranchised for what ever reason, and this film just sat down with a checklist and marked them off, one by one.
I will credit it with it taking the murderous demon/ ghost/ imaginary friend, and tweaking it a little to make the payoff somewhat different, though it does feel like it’s riffing a little on Steven King’s It, but because the rest of it is so mediocre, the payoff doesn’t feel like a reward, and instead feels just like a relief that it’s all over.
The menu to the DVD
Disc: Nothing
Film: 2/10
Extras: N/A
Re-Watchability: 0/10
Now THAT’s a spider.
This review was done with the Australian release DVD purchased from JB Hifi
The Umbrella release of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)
Why?
It’s a question I ask myself a lot in regards to movies.
For example, why the HELL does a horror movie starring Winnie the Pooh exist? Is it because of the fandom behind the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the strange horror films with nostalgic/ childish themes of Willy’s Wonderland and The Banana Splits? More likely it was because the rights to the characters become public domain on the 1st January 2022, and even though Disney have the rights to their depiction of the characters, they can’t really control anything that anyone else wants to do… including writer/ director Rhys Frake-Waterfield, who claimed in an Instagram post ‘that’s what I’m try to do, ruin everybody’s childhood!’
I don’t know about you, but I can smell the soiled nappy of Enfant terrible!
The excellent thing about this film is it is actually a sequel to all of A. A. Mine’s original stories, with some embellishments.
Mary (Paula Coiz) and Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) smell some Pooh.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey tells of Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) who as a child met some strange half human, half animal creatures, Owl, Rabbit, Eeyore, Piglet and Winnie the Pooh, in 100 Acre Wood, whom he befriended and everyday took them food and played with them… but little boys grow up and eventually, Christopher left them to fend for themselves, but they had lost their animalistic instincts, and on one particularly hungry night, killed Eeyore and ate him. This effected them so badly that they swore they would never ever talk to a human ever again.
Many years later, Christopher takes his fiancé Mary (Paula Coiz) back to prove to her that every story he had told her about his childhood was true, but after Piglet (Chris Cordell) murders her, and he and Winnie the Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) take Christopher prisoner, they start a rampage which includes a local house which has had recently had a group of young women have moved in for a short holiday, getting away from the pressure of the real world and the digital age.
Lara (Natasha Tosini) is about to be in even hotter water!
This film has one thing that is quite frustrating about it: the premise is so damned stupid that you want to hate it and as a gory monster movie… we’ll, it’s actually not that bad! It does the simple thing of filling itself full of standard horror tropes as they obviously expected that such an idea would be thought of as ridiculous. Also, in it making the 100 Acre Wood animals just men in masks, the need for the sense of disbelief that would be required for animatronics or stop motion is bypassed, and we can just get into the ideas of the story and the 100 mile-an-hour gore and violence.
I’ll just double down on what I claimed too: the masks look like something Trick or Treat Studios would produce to piss of Disney, and they are just whacked onto the heads of monstrously sized actors (well they appear to be, whether they are or not could be a trick of the camera) and the buffoonishly friendly faces belie the terror that they can cause. This juxtaposition of childhood memories and adult violence are off-putting and really make them terrifying. The effects are on point too, with some really strange bits with Pooh’s friendly face being coated in blood as he dispatches another human.
The gore is frequent and often
The acting is, well, classic horror trope-ish as well, with a combination of actual decent actors, and people who can read words but are attractive, so being convincing is just a side product. I can’t imagine any of the people in the film will ever be concerned about this being on their resume when they are accepting their Oscar.
The music and set pieces are top notch and make this weird film weirder. The 100 Acre Woods are flat out bizarre, and some of the other sets, like the abandoned garage, are places that I would have be unsettled by even if I was just the location scout. The soundtrack matches the odd places as well, confirming the location’s odd look with its soundscape.
The story of converting the legend of Pooh and his friends is quite clever, with starvation and abandonment being their motivations for being killers, and this is well incorporated into what proves itself to be a well-made slasher/ monster movie… I’m still not quite sure which as it on one hand it’s like a Frankenstein movie, but on the other, seems like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or The Hills Have Eyes. Maybe seeing as it does have the ‘remote violent family’ thing happening, it’s more a hillbilly horror movie.
I think if I must make the comparison to another movie, it would be Wrong Turn. It’s got that 70s/ 80s remoteness vibe to it, but certainly is a modern take on it. The addition of Winnie the Pooh seems more like an afterthought to an existing script to give it notoriety and attention, but it slides right in like a knife between the ribs.
To its detriment, it does somehow feel like it goes on a little too long. Is it because it’s a joke that outstays it’s welcome? Maybe, but it took me several sittings to get through it.
Despite that, I did have a lot of fun watching this film, but I think without the Pooh references it would be easily forgotten. It’s good, but like many horror movies of this type, I think it might fade quite quickly and be one of those ‘yeah, I think I saw that like ten years ago’ movies.
The menu screen to the Umbrella Entertainment release
There’s some interesting stuff amongst the extras on this Australian Bluray release of the film.
Behind the Scenes is literally just some shot-on-phone footage of on-set ways of making the movie. No information, no commentary, just stuff that happened. There’s not a great deal of interest here. It’s probably a nice keepsake for those who worked on the film.
Bloopers is just what it says on the box. As with the above extra, the people who worked on the film would possibly find it funnier than we, the viewers.
Winnie the Pooh – Violins and Honey is actually a fascinating piece… it’s a piece that will also make you say ‘why?’ but it’s interesting nevertheless. For some reason, composer Andrew Scott Bell and his manager Mike Rosen travel to an apiary as they had heard that a company called Violin Torture had set a violin in a hive to see if bees would use it, and Bell wanted to use the violin on the soundtrack. This is their story.
Fan Art is a 30 second slideshow of some fan art for the movie.
There is also a trailer for the film.
This disc also features an audio commentary, which I didn’t find until later as it’s in the ‘set up’ menu option rather than the ‘extras. The commentary is with writer/ director Rhys Frake-Waterfield and cinematographer Vince Knight. It’s a very engaging commentary with discussions about budget and even the release date and it’s competitor releases.
The film was reviewed using the Australian release Bluray, purchased from JB Hifi.
Seriously, if you have this much blood on your Pooh, seek medical advice!
Digital Retribution 