Movies
‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ Scared Up $4 Million at the Worldwide Box Office
Originally set for a one-night-only theatrical release, the pre-release viral success of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey led to an expanded theatrical release from Fathom Events, which began on February 15. The film played in theaters here in the United States through February 23, initially in 1,652 theaters but very quickly cut down to a few hundred.
Despite the relatively limited release – and also in spite of the largely negative reviews – Blood and Honey managed to scare up an impressive $1.7 million domestically. The slasher movie has also been released in many territories outside the United States, and the film’s worldwide total is even more impressive: a whopping $4 million at the time of writing!
Rhys Frake-Waterfield directed the bloody horror movie for Jagged Edge Productions, a twisted take on the classic children’s tale. It’s a sign of the times that a movie like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was even able to secure a nationwide theatrical release, and its surprising box office success is a testament to an insatiable audience hunger for horror movies.
Naturally, a sequel is already in the works.
In this version of the classic story, Christopher Robin is headed off to college and he has abandoned his old friends, which then leads to the duo embracing their inner monsters.
“The days of adventures and merriment have come to an end, as Christopher Robin, now a young man, has left Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet to fend for themselves. As time passes, feeling angry and abandoned, the two become feral.
“After getting a taste for blood, Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet set off to find a new source of food. It’s not long before their bloody rampage begins.”
Amber Doig-Thorne, Maria Taylor, and Danielle Scott star in the horror movie, which is possible thanks to the original story slipping into the public domain. What a time to be alive!
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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