Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 has begun slashing its way into theaters and the first reviews are now live. As we first reported on FearHQ.com, the embargo was lifted on the sequel's release date, a move which typically means a studio wants to avoid negative verdicts killing a new movie's momentum.
Well, Fathom Events needn't have worried because, as we write this, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 has an impressive 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes (it initially hit the review aggregator with a perfect 100%).
That's admittedly based on only nine verdicts, but there are noteworthy outlets among them. AV Club, for example, says, "This is cinema at its most punk rock - a raucous, unpolished, cheap, sacred-cow shredding middle finger to the mainstream with just enough raw talent inside to keep it from being dismissable."
Dread Central, meanwhile, adds, "Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is a vast improvement to its predecessor, campy and weird but a bit too self-serious for its own good."
As for Bloody Disgusting, they explain, "This flawed but enjoyable sequel defies expectations - albeit low ones - and outperforms its predecessor on most levels."
These may not be 5* reviews, but they're positive enough to fall under the "Fresh" category and that's going to do wonders for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2's all-important Rotten Tomatoes score. Its predecessor has a dire 3% score based on 62 reviews, so this is a huge improvement.
Franchise director Rhys Frake-Waterfield was recently asked about that single-digit score and said, "It's a really strange one for me. To be honest, you've got to have a really, really thick skin to be a filmmaker because you get heavily, heavily criticized regardless of the means and the resources you have."
"When your film is out there like that, it literally gets directly compared to Marvel films, even though you're on 0.01% of their budget. We probably didn't have their catering budget," the filmmaker continued. "They're substantially different. But because of the scale Winnie went to, a lot of the critics did almost like-for-like comparisons."
Deep within the 100-Acre-Wood, a destructive rage grows as Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Owl, and Tigger find their home and their lives endangered after Christopher Robin revealed their existence. Not wanting to live in the shadows any longer, the group decides to take the fight to the town of Ashdown, home of Christopher Robin, leaving a bloody trail of death and mayhem in their wake.
Winnie and his savage friends will show everyone that they are deadlier, stronger and smarter than anyone could ever imagine and get their revenge on Christopher Robin, once and for all.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 has a much bigger budget than the first movie and is set to be part of a new "Poohniverse." Read more about that here.