Pinocchio Unstrung (18)

Geppetto becomes legal guardian of his young grandson, James, after the boy is orphaned. The traumatised tyke subsequently loses best friend Zach to cancer and Geppetto vows to create an eternal friend for the grief-stricken child. In his basement, Geppetto carves a living wooden boy named Pinocchio from an enchanted tree. The grateful grandson plays with Pinocchio behind closed doors but the puppet's moral compass is dangerously compromised.

LondonNet Film Review

Pinocchio Unstrung (18) Film Review from LondonNet

Rhys Frake-Waterfield, writer-director of the deplorable Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood And Honey and its bloodthirsty sequel, trades gallons of gore in the Hundred Acre Wood – as never imagined by AA Milne – for a similarly brutal reworking of Carlo Collodi’s 19th-century fantasy. If you wish upon a star for a relentless slasher horror shot using impressive practical effects and puppets then Pinocchio Unstrung delivers with aplomb. Behind-the-scenes footage embedded in the end credits reveals the filmmaking ingenuity that reduces numerous members of cast to squelchy morasses of torn flesh, severed limbs and glistening innards…

A nifty shadow puppetry prologue establishes Geppetto (Richard Brake) as legal guardian of his young grandson, James (Cameron Bell), after the boy is orphaned. The traumatised tyke subsequently loses best friend Zach (Elliott Spilling) to cancer and Geppetto vows to create “something that will never say goodbye, something that will never belong to death”.

In his basement, Geppetto carves a living wooden boy named Pinocchio (voiced by Jude Evan Lloyd) from an enchanted tree as an eternal friend for James. The grateful grandson plays with Pinocchio behind closed doors but the puppet’s moral compass is compromised by one of Geppetto’s discarded creations, Wood Mother (Emma Tate), who asserts that it is Pinocchio’s duty to stop anyone from harming James: “Protecting your brother, that’s real love.”

Consequently, anyone who dares to threaten James is marked for violent retribution. A vicious Cricket (Robert Englund) poisons Pinocchio’s ear – “The world is full of rot you need to stop!” – to ensure the puppet holds fast to his murderous path. As the body count escalates, everyone in James’s orbit becomes potential collateral damage including close friends Dudley (Jack Art Gray) and Mia (Jessica Balmer).

According to anthropomorphic teddy Winnie-the-Pooh: “A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside.” Friendship is at the blackened heart of Pinocchio Unstrung and in its quieter moments – the few there are – Frake-Waterfield’s picture achieves a surprising amount of raw emotion. Young cast work incredibly hard to prevent leaden dialogue from teetering over into risibility.

Alas, restraint isn’t a core component of the writer-director’s vocabulary and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to orchestrate maximum carnage. A seemingly benign visit to a gym becomes a preposterous bloodbath and the titular antihero literally pulls strings in the most grotesque fashion. The script appropriates the framework of Collodi’s source novel – the puppet’s nose still grows when he lies – but Frake-Waterfield gleefully warps the mischievous marionette’s misadventures. Here, Pinocchio deliberately tells fibs to create the perfect tapered weapon to slide into a victim’s fleshy orifice. It’s a rare instance when wooden acting is desirable.

– Kim Hu