The Last Attack: Childhood Literary Innocence Degraded by Filmmakers

Last week I was on a mental rampage against the attack on innocence made in the latest attempt to shock and awe film goers.  For decades Christians and Christianity, even Jesus himself, was ridiculed and scathed by unseemly writers and directors.  Now, even what has been a secular sanctuary for a hundred years has been breached by the most vile and repugnant of “artists.”  I am speaking of those who created films of horror and violence, based on beloved children’s characters.  Some of these characters were your favorite and mine.

The horror genre, of which some I enjoy, has gone beyond the pale in an attempt to add elements of debauchery to what was never more than pure in intent.  In the beginning of modern horror we have Shelley who gave us Frankenstein, and then a multitude of “Blobs” and “Things” and oodles of aliens from outer space to make us scream in frightened delight.  Over the past 50 years, however, the industry twisted itself into knots by attempting to top the charts by creating the bloodiest, the goriest, and the most shockingly realistic violence.  From 1973’s The Exorcist, to the 1974 release of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the genre has plunged into a dark abyss and taken everything sacred with it. Every movie seemed to push the envelope further to see how far they could go – and thanks to the paying audience that licked it up – they continued to plummet. From implied horror to explicit goreporn, once again they have stretched the limit of the genre and sought out new material; the beloved world of children’s literature.

Killer clowns are gross and scary, but in part based on fact (i.e. John Wayne Gacy), but not one filmmaker has yet, that I can think of, reinvented Bozo or Ronald McDonald as serial killers.  It may be coming, however, to a theatre or on-demand soon, for nothing is sacrosanct these days.  For example, the 2023 movie called Five Nights at Freddy’s, resembles the Chuck E. Cheese restaurants in its early days of animatronics.  Taking a real place where children loved to have their pizza parties, changing the name, and turning the singing characters into deadly machines possessed by murdered children smells of stench; but even this is not the bottom of the septic tank.  That award goes to the latest exploitation of literary innocence with the creators of a horror film based on “Winnie-the-Pooh.”   

The 2024 release of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is the sole product of 30-year-old Rhys Frake-Waterfield, owner of Dark Abyss Productions.  On a budget of less than $100,000 he managed to turn A.A. Milne’s beloved children’s character into a murderer, and rake in over $7 million in the box office.  A number that has only encouraged him to continue with his idea of producing “The Twisted Childhood Universe;” a series of bloody rampages aimed at the purest of literary concepts.

Blood and Honey, labeled a “slasher” film in the industry, turns the characters in Hundred Acre Wood into cannibals and murderers of each other, as well as the human friends of Christopher Robin.  Apparently, Christopher Robbins grew up and left for college, leaving his fairytale friends destitute.  Without him, they turn on each other and then on the outside world. 

There is no happy ending.

I do not know what is more vile, the mind and heart of the creator of this abomination or the ~600,000 people who paid to see the film.  What I do know is this, it makes God very unhappy.  But hey, who cares about what God thinks when money and fame are involved!  No doubt the deconstructive wheels are turning in the minds of American filmmakers (who are often inspired by the UK and Europe).  Will there be a film about a cannibalistic Walton’s Family?  Will Mayberry become the hub of sex-trafficking with Aunt Bee the “town madam” and thusly covered up by a corrupt Sheriff Andy?  You get the picture.  There is a sick and twisted aspect of human imagination that borders the obscene and has reared its ugly head throughout the centuries, yet this has to be among the worst forms of exploitation of innocence and purity that I have ever witnessed.  Where once these things were thought and done in darkness, now they are embraced with bright lights and red carpets.

Is there no shame anymore?  Is there nothing, even secular, that is sacred?  Apparently not, and that spells heavenly trouble for this our so-called “free” civilization.  First Europe, then the British, and now America is turning against all that is good and pure in an attempt to degrade us to the level of slaves to wickedness.  (A common ploy of Satan: level the playing field by universal degradation).

Yet, of the wicked, God has this to say. 

He is angry with them every day (Psa. 7:11), 

They are alienated from him by the wickedness of their mind (I Col. 1:21), and, though

He is slow to anger, and great in power, he will not at all acquit them (Nah. 1:3).

My apologies to A.A. Milne, who gave us one of the sweetest and most enduring of childhood imaginations; Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Owl, Eeyore and Christopher Robbin, with their adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood.  As for Mr. Frake-Waterfield, his comrades and their supporters – the time is coming when you will wish that you had followed Jesus Christ, instead of the impurity of your human heart.