Pinocchio Unstrung: Review

Three years ago, Rhys Frake-Waterfield took a childhood IP that had gone into the public domain and made it a horror film called Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. The concept had set the internet alite and popularized horror retellings of public domain concepts. Since then, he has been directing and producing an assortment of films to make the Twisted Childhood Universe (including Blood and Honey II, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, and Bambi: The Reckoning) and directing its latest: Pinocchio: Unstrung.

The History of Societal Integration in Horror Cinema

Ari Aster’s name has quickly ascended in the horror community after his two most recent releases of Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019). Both of these films look at the consequences of bringing outsiders into social circles that they do not belong in. In which, a character does not benefit

Sequentially SpeakingCody Enos

This reimagining of the classic tale is a coming-of-age story but with more gore and guts. The tone is more playful compared to its predecessors even though it has some of the goriest scenes in the franchise, but that balance of horror and comedy works very well. It helps that these characters come across as endearing. You hope Pinocchio doesn’t go down this dark road with an evil cricket in his ear guiding him to murder, but that’s the tragedy of wanting, but never being, a real boy.

James, played by Cameron Bell, is a teenager surrounded by death from the untimely demise of his parents to closest friend, ends up living with his grandfather Geppetto who takes pity on him and tries to build his grandson a friend who would never die, nor abandon, him named Pinocchio. James and Pinocchio quickly become best friends, but as questions start to arise about Pinocchio’s creation the puppet’s moral compass starts to waver, especially when anyone hurts James.

What follows is a gleefully gory odyssey of adolescence with some great practical effects. As shown during the credits in behind-the-scenes snippets, Pinocchio is a fully realized puppet with facial expressions that are so impressive for this small budget horror. Jude-Evan Lloyd’s voice performance combined with the puppetry on set make Pinocchio one of the best realized fairy tales Rhys Frake-Waterfield has done. Sympathetic and villainous, a heartbreaking tragedy.

Once the film starts unraveling how Pinocchio has come to be, the horror turns eldritch with characters such as Pinocchio’s ‘Wood Mother’ and sidekick Cricket. Horror icon Robert Englund voices Cricket who acts as part of Pinocchio’s dark subconscious while his Wood Mother starts shaping his morality and giving him false hope on how to become a real boy. The clincher is how shocking the final act of the movie is as it slides into the realm of Geppetto as a Victor Frankenstein parallel with an impressive final set piece in the rain.

Overall, fans of this franchise will be in for a treat as Pinocchio: Unstrung is yet another great entry balancing some of the most whimsy these films have to offer while also being the goriest. This would also be the perfect showcase for new fans to experience how far these childhood tales would go once confronted by the darkness of the horror genre. Simply put, this is the new gold standard of the Twisted Childhood Universe.