Imagine you were a painter. A distinctly below-average painter. The sort of ‘artist’ who throws 5 quids’ worth of acrylic at a canvas, and sells it for a tenner. Then does that 30 times a year to make ends meet. (You might’ve seen that kind of dross in the Tate Modern.) Yet one day, somehow, you accidentally create a piece that resonates with the public. Something they really want to see more of. (Enough monkeys, enough typewriters, etc … ) And okay it wasn’t great. It wasn’t even remotely good. But enough people enjoyed it to demand a follow-up. And imagine this time you were given £5,000 to throw yet more colourful gunk at another canvas to make ‘the same but better’.

You’d be ecstatic. All your dreams come true. All the hard work you’d done over the last few years, come to fruition. You’d pull out every stop to make the sequel a thousand times better; maybe learn some new techniques, use better paint, higher quality brushes, et cetera …

Of course you would.

Unless your name is Jagged Edge Productions.

That’s right. Pooh is back. And this time it’s Pooh-sonal.

I’ll be honest: I was hoping the nehative reactions to the first one would prevent anyone from funding the sequel. Some die-hard fans liked it (they claim), but so many viewers felt hugely ripped-off and conned after what was an enticing trailer, that it must’ve been like if you thought Santa was going to bring you a snooker table, but what he actually delivered was a crap second-hand board game version of Big Break. With the black ball missing.

And this really was their Big Break. But they fluffed it. Went for the Red, smashed the cue ball into the Black, and sent it spiralling off the table …

I believe Jagged Edge were given about £200k for the sequel (at least 10x the budget of the first), but did they succeed in making a better film?

You can look at this movie in two ways: firstly as a sequel to the ‘original’, and secondly as a standalone film. Or thirdly, as an exhibit in the Tate Modern* where you stare at it and wonder if there is actually a deeper meaning to what is essentially dogshit on a stick.

As a sequel to the first Blood and Honey - or actually more of a ‘reboot’ - it is better. In the same way that later strains of the Covid virus were better than previous ones. But with the budget they had - something I can assure you that Scott previously only dreamed of - they should’ve done better.

As a standalone picture: if the first didn’t exist, then this certainly would’ve pleased those who were excited by the premise. But at its core - as a slasher film - it’s really not very good. In fact it’s worse, in a way, because there were no excuses here for lack of budget. They had a load of money and they still didn’t show enough gore, and still failed to recognise the worth of hiring a decent screenwriter.

I might be being unkind. Matt Leslie was hired [drugged, blackmailed…?] to co-write the script. He doesn’t have a huge CV, but he wrote a film called Summer of ‘84 which I rather enjoyed, and shows he’s a competent writer. How much influence he had is hard to say. There’s definitely an attempt at a story - a great improvement on most of their films, which is generally a bunch of 20-somethings talking shit around a campfire, reminiscing about one of their friends whilst doling out clunky exposition - but it still failed to make us like or follow the characters.

But forget that! This is a slasher! The most base of horror films. Who needs story? Who needs characters?! Who needs anything so long as you have a huge blade slicing through a nubile teen’s torso, splattering blood over her pert breasts?

Well, it still needs TENSION.

And the duo of Rhys & Scott just simply cannot deliver tension.

This is evident from Scene 1 with some girls in a caravan. There’s a sudden scare with a bang at the window, but it comes too soon, and not enough tension is built. The thing about tension is that it’s cheap. The original Hallowe’en didn’t cost much, but the tension - the dreadful anticipation of where the masked killer might be - is omnipresent, and very well done.

But the tension in this movie - as with 99% of their god-awful films - is missing. Compare with something like Barbarian which competently feeds on the dread of a strange male housemate, of going down into a dark basement, etc. Rhys & Scott’s idea of tension is ‘dragging a scene out for an unnecessary length of time’, which actually equates to the opposite of tension, leading to scenes which are slow and boring, and serve nothing but to add padding to the already-far-too-long 82 minutes of film.

So are there any good bits?

Well, sort of.

One of the main issues with the first one was that Winnie and Piglet were just chubby guys in crappy masks. Here, however, a large chunk of the budget (perhaps too large) was spent on the animals looking more realistic. And they certainly look more like anthropomorphic versions of Christopher Robin’s mind than guys in masks that you’d see on the local evening news.
The kills themselves are also mostly more graphic (and visible) than the first film. AND YET … even with this budget, they still shy away from some of the big kill shots. Cut away without really showing anything, like a cheap school play. Scott’s raison d'être is Gory Kills, yet there were several here that he shied away from. There’s a potentially AWESOME kill with a bear trap, but you don’t really see it. Another where Pooh saws a girl’s head off and it’s so obviously a dummy. So were they low on budget?

5.0 on IMDb is the most you can hope for!

Cue Simon Callow. The rambunctious chap in Four Weddings who was eventually the subject of the titular funeral. This well-established actor was clearly there for the pay cheque and not the IMDb credit. All he does is give some clunky exposition, then pulls a gun from literally nowhere and shoots himself for no reason (everyone in the UK has guns in this Parallel Pooh-niverse). Which makes you wonder if maybe they could’ve saved a few grand on a cheaper actor and spent that on the kills.

So what about the story?
As I say, they made an attempt. I was wondering where they going to go after the first film, but they - rather cleverly - went Meta and incorporated it into this film (I won’t say ‘Sequel’ because it isn’t). Which was a cute way of saying ‘The first one wasn’t great, but here’s what we wanted to do if we had the budget initially’. I won’t go into it. It’s not exciting. There’s a girlfriend, there are some kids, there was a birthday party… cue some flashbacks. It’s a fair attempt to give us something to care about, but really …

… this is all about Scott.

Poor Nikolai Leon. The original Christopher Robin was by far the best actor in the first film, but Scott ousted him and used this opportunity as a cynical showcase for his acting. To be fair, Scott’s a decent actor (he was in a good short called Lambing Season), but sadly I can’t watch him now without wanting to stab the screen. However, in Pooh 2 his character’s very whiny and one-dimensional. Lots of weepy-weepy ‘acting’ in the hope he might win an Oscar (as opposed to a Razzie). Stop fucking crying!! I admit, I may have skipped through much of the scenes that he was in, in order to preserve the integrity of my TV screen.

Plus: He has a weird nose!
It’d look better if it were broken. Just a thought…

And so onto the Finale of Pooh 2: Pooh Only Live Twice.

The denouement is a major set-piece rave in a warehouse, featuring guest roles from Every Other Person Who Was In Any Of Scott’s Films. (Disappointingly, I didn’t receive an invite, even though I’m a seasoned Supporting Artiste and star of several school plays.) This warehouse/factory also conveniently has every tool imaginable lying round (including a convenient chainsaw).

This would’ve been Rhys & Scott’s wet dream. They would’ve literally fantasised about this while mutually masturbating each other.

And it was … alright. But again: no tension. It cuts from yet another shot of Scott crying [stop fucking crying!!] to this scene, with no establishing shot or anything, and within about 5 seconds Pooh kills a guy who questions his outfit. Look, I’ve been to a few of these raves, and if someone turned up looking like a murderous bear in dungarees you’d shake their hand, not tell them they look shit. But anyway.

The camera pulls through this old building, past hordes of dancers in neon 80s garb [nice], and onto the enhanced breasts of Ms Potato Head, aka Natasha Toshini, aka Hot Tub Girl from the first film. Cue a few more boobs in see-through tops feat. all the cheap OnlyFans girls that Scott’s used in previous films.
And without any build-up of tension at all … without any peering through windows or ominous shots from the outside … the carnage begins.

Natasha Toshini Boobs — Yep, they’re still there…

And it is indeed carnage. Many innocent people die - Hooray! It starts with the aforementioned bear trap, which just could’ve and should’ve been 100% better. But where did the trap come from?! Pooh wasn’t carrying it, he didn’t seem to find it in this veritable Ali Baba’s cave of weaponry … and yet it’s launched around a poor girl’s neck, and … okay i won’t spoil that, as it’s almost a great scene. After that, there’s a lot of chasing (including a shot where Pooh gallops on all fours in a hilariously non-scary way), a lot of screaming, and then the introduction of Tigger.

The wonderful thing about Tiggers …

… is that they can turn up in a film 80% through with no foreshadowing or anything. And so he does, bouncing in via the back door (oo-er) and tag-teaming Pooh’s killing spree, whilst calling everyone “Bitch”. Many reviewers have accused Rhys & Scott of being misogynistic, and they might be onto something, but I think here it’s a plain case of scar-faced Tigger mimicking Freddy Krueger.

There’s a massive irony here - Rhys & Scott using the expired Intellectual Property of A.A. Milne, whilst ripping off other horror icons such as Freddy, Jason etc, plus there’s an obvious Texas Chainsaw Massacre nod at the end (via Pooh with the conveniently-placed chainsaw he picked up earlier). If it IS a homage, it doesn’t feel right. None of it feels right, to be honest.

None of it really feels like a true horror film.

Anyway, Tigger and Pooh kill some more unfortunate clubbers. Christoper Robin turns up - still crying about Pooh killing half his family or something - to a warehouse full of bodies, neatly laid out like Auschwitz victims. He goes on to confront both the baddies. Now, Scott would clearly struggle to win a fight against baby Roo, let alone genetically-enhanced Tigger or Winnie. Yet in he goes, all tears blazing...

He shoots Tigger with the gun he stole from Callow earlier; Tigger then slashes him from about 10ft away, and bounces off like a ninja-tiger. Chris then goes outside, where he has a showdown with Pooh. The latter’s chainsaw somehow catches on fire, and scares Christopher for a bit (more crying). But then, distracted by the supposed girlfriend (whoever the fuck she is) Mr Robin then finds a very convenient AXE from nowhere, and does a Flying Skull Smash on Pooh like some early Mortal Kombat move. Except to call it that is an insult to the classic game.

And that’s it.

There’s some nonsense at the very end with Scott crying some more just to solidify his Oscars entry. This part is tonally wrong - the music is wrong, the feel is wrong … did we just watch a slasher movie, or a Ken Loach film about a troubled young man reuniting with his disconnected family?

Overall: It’s not the worst film in the world. That award goes to the 101 other films they made before this. But - given the budget and everything - it’s still pretty bad. The makers of the Terrifier films won’t be shaking in their boots. Hopefully Rhys & Scott will just quit and leave filmmaking to the rest of us. But that seems unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future.

However … what’s great about this I.P. being in the public domain is that ANY of us could make a movie with the same characters, and make a better version. It could be the guy on the street, it could be a film student, it could be you …

… it could be me.

If you’ve never been to the Tate Modern on London’s South Bank, it’s a great place to go if you’re feeling down (like Eeyore). The quality of ‘art’ and the pompous self-importance of it all is so laughable that it would make any depressed teenager convinced that life isn’t that bad and they must have a greater importance in the grand scheme of things.

Pooh 2 Review