Nostalgia has slowly become a large part of media consumption from what I have noticed in upcoming and more recent horror films. With The Mean One currently in production and Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey speculated to be released sometime in early 2023, there has been a sudden strange influx of horror centered around popular characters in children’s books and television.
I started to notice this trend in 2019 with The Banana Splits Movie (2019), a horror comedy film centered around the friendly anthropomorphic band of the same name. The Banana Splits had a legitimate television show on Boomerang, where they would be seen playing around and interacting with their child audience. Their main theme song, “The Tra La La Song”, played in advertisements on the network constantly. Though it shouldn’t have been surprising that a movie centered around fuzzy animatronics turning into cold-blooded killers would eventually happen, it was odd that The Banana Splits were the first choice.
As it turns out, they weren’t.
The script used for The Banana Splits Movie was actually meant for a Five Nights at Freddy’s film, which was then forfeited to Blumhouse after Scott Cawthon, the creator of the animatronic horror franchise, decided he wanted more depth to the film than a simple slasher could provide. Warner Bros. continued to produce the movie with the beloved characters, and so they became the murderous robots starring in the first ever horror film adapted from pre-established children’s media.
Given that Five Nights at Freddy’s had rampant success in the 2010s, it became clear that a new genre of horror was on the rise. This type of horror played on childhood memories, thus tainting them. Willy’s Wonderland (2021) was the next movie to come out of this subgenre, starring Nicholas Cage as a near-mute janitor locked up for the night in a haunted pizzeria. Though the fight scenes in this film are entertaining, the movie does not offer much in terms of plot and acting (which—to be fair—is expected of a Nicholas Cage flick anyway). The Banana Splits Movie also disappointed, which partly had to do with the fact that the “animatronics” in the film were clearly just people in costume. Unsurprisingly, both of these films scored similarly on Rotten Tomatoes, with The Banana Splits Movie receiving a 63% critic score and Willy’s Wonderland getting a solid 60%.
From what it seems now, horror production companies have decided to branch out from the standard “animatronics killing people” trope into a broader category of childhood nightmare fuel. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey takes an approach akin to You’re Next (2011), with masked individuals meant to represent various animals going on a full-blown murder spree. This movie became entirely possible due to the fact that Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in the beginning of 2022, thus allowing anyone to commercialize the lovable characters however they pleased without fear of copyright. If someone wants to turn the aloof, honey-loving yellow bear we all grew to love into a complete monster, then so be it.
Personally, I look forward to more horror movies with these concepts. Provided they don’t take themselves too seriously, “childhood ruined” films show promise. While at first these movies might feel like a cop-out for producing original content, I think they could potentially be used to put a creative spin on media that we have become familiar with.
The value of an iconic childhood character thrown into a horror film lies in both the shocking means of how they reached such a point and the freedom to twist the character’s capabilities in disturbing ways. Winnie the Pooh might not have cartoonish powers, but that’s not to say other characters who eventually end up in the public domain won’t. Plenty of leniency is offered in what cartoon characters can and cannot do, and placing them into a genre meant to scare and startle means they can become all the more unhinged and brutal while simultaneously offering severe repercussions for their actions.
The only thing I am skeptical about in accordance with this idea is the use of these characters simply for the sake of doing so. Hopefully more will be done with them than simply making every character a psychotic slasher bent on revenge. With any luck, we will be seeing zany and outrageous characters from our younger years wreaking havoc in ways rivaling that of Art the Clown. If not, there is little faith to be found in the growth of what could transform into a very intriguing subgenre of horror.
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