Part Two? Really? As terrible as the first one was, how did it get a sequel? Well, because it made money. Enough said.

Right off the bat though it was odd because they have a different character playing Christopher Robin. Also Pooh and Piglet have been recast, but as they are costumed creatures, you can’t really tell. 

This movie, in theory, picks up from Christopher returning to Ashdown and telling the story about what happened. But nobody believes him, and thinks he actually killed everyone. Although they don’t explain how he is believed to be the killer, yet wasn’t jailed and charged for it. Now here’s the cool thing though. There was a movie made about the story he told, and throughout this movie, we see snippets of that film adaptation. But those snippets are actual footage from the first movie. Setting up the idea that the first movie we watched was actually a fictionalized adaptation of what happened to Christopher. 

And this idea right away has me all in. It also explains why Pooh and Piglet look different when we see them in the early scenes of this film. Granted, we don’t know about the film right away, so their first appearance just seems like a weird choice they made in having new creature designs. 

Rewinding to the start though, we find ourselves in an RV with 3 girls who are trying to use a Ouija Board in the 100 Acre Woods. They are derailed by the arrival of Owl (new character appearance!) and Piglet. Who kill them all. But hunters come to the Woods trying to find the killers and wind up taking out Piglet with a shotgun blast to the face. Effectively removing his head. So much for a new actor playing Piglet, and I really liked his new design too! Owl convinces Pooh that they need to take action against the people of Ashdown, because they are going to keep searching until they find and kill Pooh and his friends. Also, Christopher is having some major life complications in the aftermath of the first movie. Since everyone blames him, and it is a small town, he is constantly being badgered over it. His car vandalized, fired from his job over it. He is a pariah, and it seems odd that he doesn’t just leave the town. 

I’m gonna be a bit more cagey about how this movie plays out, because I found it much better than the original (low bar by my standards, I know.) And we all know that I prefer to be spoilery on bad movies and hold back on ones I enjoy. One thing that bothered me though (and to be fair, this is an issue beyond the TCU franchise) was names. In the first movie Christopher Robin’s fiancee was named Mary. The final girl at the end of that movie was Marie. Early on in this sequel movie there is talk about Mary, but it refers to his therapist Mary Darling. There are many other girl names out there beyond Mary and derivatives of it. To be fair, there are many characters in this sequel who have unique and non confusing names. And Mary Darling may not have been conceived when the original was filmed, as she is a tie in to the Peter Pan Neverland Nightmare movie (the third movie in the TCU franchise.) And I may be bothered by this more because as I watched It: Welcome to Derry, they have a kid main character named Rich. Which is just too referential to the original story with the great line “Beep beep, Richie” from Pennywise. Why? Why name a kid Rich? Everytime I see him I think “Beep beep, Richie.” Unless they are going to use this kid to do the “Beep beep, Richie” and set up the idea that it was a call back in the IT novel to this prequel that didn’t exist. But I have digressed massively away from Winnie the Pooh. Oh bother!

As I think deeper on this movie, I realize it gets a lot of grace because the original was so bad. Because there are some really bad parts in this. The rave party scene was pretty bad. And it felt like it was a good 20 minutes of the overall run time. 

And now for a pretty big spoiler. So you have been warned. I don’t want to throw this out there, but I also want to talk about it. There is an underlying story about Christopher’s twin brother being abducted when they were young. And then him being genetically manipulated to turn into Pooh. With other kids having been abducted and transformed into other classic cast members of the Pooh stories. But all of the experiments died, were buried, and then self resurrected. Which sets up the end credit scene where we see Piglet’s head starting to regrow. Although why it waited until the end of the movie seems a bit crazy. It should have been growing throughout the film as his death was so early. 

At the end of the day, I’m settling on 5 stars for Blood and Honey 2. It’s not an amazing movie by any stretch, but it is a significant upgrade in quality from the first installment. You can tell they have learned improvements on some aspects of storytelling and filmmaking in general. I have more thoughts on this, but shall save them for Peter Pan Neverland Nightmare.