Rating: C+
Dir: Scott Chambers
Star: Megan Placito, Martin Portlock, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Kit Green
This is the third entry in the “Twisted Childhood Universe” – informally known as the Poohniverse – following on from the two Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey movies. I’ve not seen those, despite my interest in public-domain horror. But on the basis of this, I might have to check them out. It’s probably fair to say Peter Pan is better than I expected. This is, admittedly, partly a result of low expectations (the publicity company couldn’t send a screener, which is an interesting promotional technique). But it’s competent, and possesses an admirable consistency of tone. I was expecting something with a more jokey, fun-house approach. There’s a reason we saw Mickey movies taking place in arcades and amusement parks.
Peter Pan, however, is almost unrelentingly grim. Welcome to hell, with Neverland clearly a metaphor for death. Peter (Portlock) is a former children’s entertainer, who now abducts and murders children, assisted by one of his former victims, who has become Tinker Bell (Green), a drug-addicted trans fairy. The latest victim is Michael (DeSouza-Feighoney), whose big sister, Wendy (Placito), goes in search of her sibling. So it’s quite a simple story, and that’s the disappointing thing here. For there’s a lot of elements in J.M. Barrie’s original story, which could have been explored and/or exploited. Instead, we get more or less the same, “X, but he’s a serial killer” we saw in the Mickey flicks.
This lack of imagination may in part be due to the limited resources, yet it’s no less of a pity. It is a little too derivative of other stuff, like It and even Joker (top). On the whole, I might have preferred this was entirely separate from the world of Peter Pan. It works better as a standalone tale of a severely twisted individual, who is operating on a bizarre agenda which only he understands. I was impressed with most of the actors. Portlock delivers a particularly creepy performance; Green is the epitome of someone suffering from Stockholm syndrome; and Placito is a decent final girl, plunging ever deeper into the hell of Peter’s delusions. There are some inconsistencies: Peter wipes out an entire school-bus, yet at other points is easily out-muscled.
Still, I guess this mad-house lack of logic is not unfitting to the concept. And there were points where I was getting a real vibe of New French Horror, in its commitment to darkness. Certainly not something I expected to come out of the Poohniverse. However, the best NFH films, such as Martyrs or Inside, have a certain, terrible beauty to them. This is not. It’s an ugly movie from head to toe, both visually and spiritually. Again, this could be deliberate, given the subject matter of child abductions and murders. Or it could be the low-budget approach breaking through. Either way, it does prove more effective then I would have predicted, and I am cautiously looking forward to the next one. Which will be Bambi: The Reckoning, I kid you not, featuring “a mutated, grieving, killing machine of a deer.” Yeah: cautiously.