The Twisted Childhood Universe was recently announced by the creators of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, and it looks like a ridiculous nightmare in all ways except how the creators intend it to be.
Lately, public domain properties have quickly become horror-bait. For some reason, edge lord wannabes in the film industry think twisting innocent characters from children's stories into the fuel of nightmares is super innovative and not at all a symptom of their own personal issues.
As soon as A.A. Milne's original Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain, Jagged Edge Productions released their Blood and Honey film where Pooh and Piglet are lunatic murderers. I really only have one thing to say about this: why? What on earth would compel someone to come up with such a terrible idea for a story, especially involving characters commonly known to children and families as friendly animated animals? What did Winnie the Pooh do to deserve this slander? They even made a sequel which somehow scored a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, though only based on 6 measly reviews, and to be fair, I don't put any stock in review aggregators as you'll find in my fourth podcast episode:
But nonetheless, there are people out there who think murderous Winnie the Pooh is quality content worth creating and consuming.
And Pooh's not alone, because recently the original Steamboat Willie cartoon also entered public domain, and almost immediately, multiple pieces of horror content based on the character were announced. One untitled film is described as following a "sadistic mouse who torments a group of unsuspecting ferry passengers." It's really hard to take that description seriously. It sounds more like live action Tom & Jerry, with Jerry freaking out unsuspecting passengers in a comedic and light-hearted manner palatable to kids.
Another one, called Mickey's Mouse Trap, is about a "group of friends trapped inside an amusement arcade after it closes as they are terrorized by a masked killer in a Mickey Mouse costume." It's pointless to ask how they managed to get trapped inside the arcade because that's not really the issue here. The issue here is a serial killer who looks like he stayed the night after his daily shift at Disneyland. Again, I must ask: why?
They should've tried something more like this short film that created a unique found-footage style documentary (which is actually fiction) based on the original story.
While it's still horror, it's not your typical slasher, which seems like everyone's public domain go-to. It thrives in its short form, it uses elements from the original, and it leaves a lot of mystery, which I find is best for horror shorts. Admittedly, even this couldn't get me to watch all the way through because I get bored by the horror genre, but I did skim all the way through, and it's obviously much better than the two feature films discussed above.
Two games were also announced. Infestation: Origins is like a cross between Granny (which I used to play a lot) and Five Nights at Freddy's where Willie's running around creating infestations and killing your teammates while you try to stop the infestation. The other is called Mouse which doesn't look half bad actually, probably because it's noir rather than horror.
But it still begs the question why do creators so badly need to take kids content and turn it into adult content?
This phenomenon doesn't just exist in the public domain. J.J. Abrams is making a Hot Wheels movie for Mattel that he says will be "emotional, grounded, and gritty." A movie about toy cars, mind you. Pixar already made several movies about cars that dealt with emotional issues which were still palatable to kids. (I say this based only on the first movie because that's the only one I remember watching.)
Mattel is also working on a movie about Barney the purple dinosaur produced by Daniel Kaluuya, star of two Jordan Peele horror films, and his film will apparently "be more adult and have adult themes - and sort of be a bit off-kilter."
Barney the purple dinosaur??? Why??? He literally only existed in kids' imagination. It's literally in the song:
Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination.
What could you possibly have to gain from adultifying a stuffed toy that turns into a talking animal in the minds of children? Unless it's a story about loss of innocence and imagination and the burdens of adulthood in a world that doesn't value youth, I really can't see how this would work.
I think part of the reason for these is that people want to make X original movie or game or show without the risk or marketing effort that comes with original content, so they attach the concept of X to the public domain or IP that is Y. Latching onto popular brands and existing popular intellectual property can be a massive boost for success.
But I also think part of this has to do with our society's obsession with darkness and disdain towards childhood. With every generation, kids seem to be aging really fast, watching mature rated content at 10 or 11, wearing makeup and cologne at 12, and generally trying to grow up and be taken seriously as adults by adults.
Adults also have this tendency to look down on things made for younger audiences, dismissing their value and criticize those who still enjoy things made for a wider age range or with less serious undertones. Just look at what's popular on TV: it's mostly mature rated television. And maybe it's part of this cycle where studios focus their energy on mature content because they know people won't watch TV-PG or TV-14 shows anymore, or maybe that's what they believe because there's also a lot of us who enjoy the content we liked as kids to this day. Shows like Good Luck Charlie still hold up all these years later, and despite being an adult, I still laugh when I watch the Duncan shenanigans and find the life lessons applicable for all ages.
On the flip side, there's the adults who can't help inserting themselves into children's spaces and adultifying the content like all the weird adult fans of kids animated shows like My Little Pony who draw and publicly post NSFW fanart and then complain that kids should stay out of these spaces if they don't want to see that stuff.
It's not that you can't be a fan of these shows - I mean I love Phineas and Ferb, and plus, this show is meant for all ages to enjoy. But I'm not even a child and I had the horrible displeasure of clicking on the Phineas and Ferb trend on Twitter and finding a fanart of their mother without clothes.
Again, I have no choice but to repeat myself: WHY.
It's not like content made for wider audiences can't still discuss darker themes. The Harry Potter films are renown for being the only film series to grow up with the kids, with the first film starting off as exploring a wonderous new world and a fun kids' mystery, and incorporating more grown-up themes as the films went on such as discrimination, corrupt governments, and propaganda.
The show Once Upon a Time on ABC also did a fantastic job of twisting fairy tales and Disney characters into new tales that provide lessons about battling the darkness within ourselves, the power of love and hope, breaking the cycle of bad parents, and the ability to change. People love to dismiss this show as fairy tale crap for kids, but they were doing evil Peter Pan way before the Poohniverse even thought of it, and they did it incredibly well.
Inspired more by J.M. Barrie's original rendition of the boy than Disney's but taking it all the way to the next level, OUAT's Peter Pan is a master manipulator, a kidnapper, and a killer rolled into one. He's not the only member of the Twisted Childhood Universe to have already been done better by this show as Pinocchio also features across a few seasons as a grown man who ended up sleeping his way around Thailand.
Once utilized their heroes and villains to craft a story with morals for all members of the family rather than purposely trying super hard to be dark just for the sake of it, or for the edginess factor. Meanwhile, Poohniverse is out here making a movie about Bambi the deer being a killing machine.
Honestly, I think I know the real reason everyone's pivoting to horror: budget. Horror films generally have much cheaper budgets than any other films, and often they can be made on microbudgets if indie creators really need to while still achieving the desired effect of bigger budget horror films, which may also have bad storylines but more famous cast members and more VFX.
You can't make a fantasy film with a small crew and four actors. I mean I did, but it was a short film that I made for my college senior thesis where I did almost all the crew roles myself, had awful weather conditions that ruined my outdoor filming, and consisted of rushed, shoddy camerawork.
But you can make a horror film with a camcorder and a dream, which I also did as a twelve-year-old, bored in my room on a Saturday afternoon in July, and so did movies like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project. Plus, horror films aren't like drama films, which can technically also be made on smaller budgets but have less audience appeal.
Because horror is a very popular genre, committing a small amount of resources is a gamble that can pay off in the millions. Jordan Peele's Get Out only cost $4.5M to make, which is comparatively quite small for most Hollywood productions, but it went on to make over $250M worldwide. Sure, the movie was good, but even if it sucked so bad that not even marketing could save it, they'd still make enough at the box office to secure a profit.
It all comes back to box office returns. Rather than spending money on marketing, or even just hiring someone to post on social media every day, it's easier to go for something small budget or something pre-existing with proven popularity. But in the long run, it's worth it to take the time to craft something really good that people will demand to watch over and over in the theater and on streaming, and market with specific strategies rather than simply slapping posters on a billboard or dropping a trailer a month before the release date.
Until producers agree to do that, it looks like we'll be stuck with a lot of childhood twisting horror for the foreseeable future.