In a small way, the micro-budgeted U.K. indie “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” more than pulled its weight in drawing audiences back to theaters two years ago. The bad-taste concept and trailer generated guilty-pleasure viral traction; then the Fathom Events theatrical window was so short, there was no chance for word-of-mouth to spoil the fun. Which was fortunate, as the film itself was an amateurish slog.
You have to give the filmmakers credit, though: They swallowed all criticism (including an impressive sweep of the Golden Raspberries), vowing to plow their considerable profits into making better movies …albeit in the same vein. Last year’s “Honey” sequel was reportedly a significant improvement. Now there’s “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare,” a nasty piece of work — in the sense that it appeals to horror fans with a strong stomach not just for gore but truly unpleasant ideas.
You might hesitate to call a film this fixated on child terror, adult perversity and sadistic violence “good,” exactly. But there’s no question director Scott Jeffrey casts a skillfully disturbed spell over a tale that emerges a cross between “It” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” Iconic Events’ three-day U.S. theatrical release through Jan. 15 will be followed by runs in other countries starting next month.
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The impetus, as with other recent “public domain horror” entries, is taking advantage of a beloved fantasy figure whose copyright protection has expired. “Blood and Honey” creator Rhys Frake-Waterfield, a producer here, and his Jagged Edge Prods. plan a whole “Twisted Childhood Universe” of such joints, with vehemently non-family-friendly takes on Bambi and Pinocchio next on the slate.
Whether “Nightmare” will remain a surprisingly artful aberration within a generally despised subgenre, or prove a harbinger of that category’s ongoing redemption, is as yet anyone’s guess. One thing is for sure: Thank goodness J.M. Barrie is long dead, because this movie would surely kill him.
Not that there’s really much connection to the Scottish author’s most famous character, who first appeared in print 123 years ago, growing enormously popular in subsequent stage and screen incarnations. The Peter Pan figure here is a grotesque real-world contortion of the “boy who never grew up” — a serial killer whose own formative traumas have persuaded him to “save” children from corrupting maturity by kidnapping and murdering them. Played as a mad, disfigured middle-aged man by Martin Porlock, he retains enough fantastical elements to briefly “fly,” and to spy glimpses of shadow-puppet-like animation. But those moments only depict his delusions.
After a lengthy prologue in which one little boy and his mother fatefully meet “Peter” — first as a circus mime, then as an uninvited home guest — Jeffrey’s script jumps forward 15 years to the present day. Pubescent Michael Darling (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) is celebrating his birthday with older siblings Wendy (Megan Placito) and John (Campbell Wallace) and his divorced mum Mary (Teresa Banham), then later at school with his best friend Joey (Hardy Yusuf). When Wendy goes to pick him up afterward, however, he has vanished. We soon realize he’s attracted the notice of creepy Peter, who abducts the lad and drags him back as a prisoner to the dilapidated rural home shared with Tinker Bell (Kit Green).
The Darlings’ fears at this atypical absence worsen when a mystery phone call heralds the return of “Peter Pan” — a past regional childnapper never apprehended, and by now assumed dead or inactive. Feeling somehow responsible, Wendy tries to abet the police search with her own investigating. Eventually this leads her to terrified Michael’s whereabouts. But not before Peter has wreaked all kinds of further havoc, including assaults on a schoolbus full of the boy’s classmates, and on the unfortunate family of Joey, who becomes another abductee.
There is no graphic brutality spared in the long climax wherein Wendy tries to rescue her brother. Even less savory is the dwelling on body horror, with characters sporting sometimes inexplicable skin conditions or other deformities. A crowning achievement in the realm of “TMI” is our discovering the “terrible things” Peter’s mother did to him apparently included severance of his … well, peter.
Jeffrey, who’s acted extensively under the name Scott Chambers, is an openly gay producer-director-performer. Yet while some story elements here are intended as sympathetic, one still questions the wisdom behind decisions like portraying Tinker Bell as a gender-ambiguous junkie. At times “Nightmare” seems to be equating “different” with “sick” and “homicidal,” to inadvertently reactionary effect. It also has some basic logic gaps — though admittedly, this is not the sort of movie in which such things typically matter.
Nevertheless, as alarmingly berserk entrapment scenarios go, Jeffrey’s feature is vivid in terms of both unsettling atmosphere and visceral action. It’s arguably a better treatment of overlapping themes than 2021’s overrated mainstream hit “The Black Phone” and undeniably a stylish great-leap-forward from the director’s prior behind-camera stints, a bleak résumé that includes “Firenado,” “Exorcist Vengeance” and “Cannibal Troll.”
Here, he has a capable cast taking its labors seriously, headlong pacing courtesy of editor Dan Allen and Vince Knight’s strong widescreen imagery. A big plus is Bridget Milesi’s production design, which realizes Peter’s abode as a sort of decrepit bedsit phantasmagoria in which every room and corridor is fit to induce a panic attack. The “Neverland” he means to send his captives to is, of course, death. Still, the setting in which they await that end is just as threatening as a knife tip or pair of strangling adult hands.
There are some decent jumpscares in “Nightmare.” What’s scary about the whole, however, is something more pervasive. However superficial its “psycho” psychologizing, the film does convey the kind of mentally unhinged environ in which hope of survival seems futile. It’s a sufficiently disturbing vision, particularly in waging war against children’s sense of protected status, that this reviewer felt offended by his neighbors: A couple who’d taken along their approximately 7-year-old daughter. When the final credits rolled, her only verdict was “Wow.” I worry when she’ll next have a full night’s sleep.