If you thought you were the only one who was horrified of the costumes in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, think again: the performers were terrified as well!
Amber Doig-Thorne portrays Alice in the highly anticipated horror, in which our childhood heroes Pooh and Piglet go on a violent spree in search of blood.
To say the least, it’s a variation on the famous story, since the Disney characters became wild after Christopher Robin (played by Nikolai Leon) abandoned them and they fought to live when he went off to university.
The horrific masks worn by Craig David Dowsett (Pooh) and Chris Cordell (Piglet) in the slasher film have been one of the film’s key talking points, since they are not only disgusting, but shockingly realistic.
Amber, 22, tells Metro.co.uk exclusively that she didn’t need to pretend when being hunted by the formerly cute, innocent figures while filming since the horror was real.
‘With Pooh and Piglet, when I first saw them in their masks, it was genuinely terrifying! When Pooh is chasing you, you’re not really acting, there is genuine fear there! Which really helped,’ she recalls.
‘That’s not just Alice being scared, Amber was scared!’
‘In the film, Pooh and Piglet are these anamorphic creatures. I think a lot of people think they’re just men running around in Pooh and Piglet masks, but that’s not the case,’ Amber also explains.
‘The story is that Pooh and Piglet are the bear and pig that we’ve grown up to know and love as children. Christopher Robin has abandoned them to study to be a doctor and they can’t fend for themselves because they’ve got so used to him looking after them, so they end up going a little bit crazy.
‘They are creatures, rather than humans. I think that’s really important to bear in mind.’
In an interview, the actress described Pooh and Piglet performers Craig and Chris as “the nicest lads out there,” which makes being followed by them with sledgehammers all the more weird.
‘They’re so friendly and it was really funny on the first day, because they disappeared for a bit and came back in full costume and all of us were just like, woah, that’s scary, but then they just started cracking jokes!
‘It was so strange, my brain was telling me to be scared because they’re covered in blood and you always imagine Pooh as this tiny cuddly bear and now I’m looking at a six foot powerhouse of a beast with this scary mask!’
Amber also expresses “respect” for how her co-stars were able to transmit their performances behind the masks, since she too depends heavily on facial expressions to portray emotion.
In terms of why she decided to portray Alice in the first place, Amber was a ‘big’ admirer of Winnie the Pooh and was eager to introduce it to a new audience with the incredibly ‘unique’ reinvented narrative.
‘Winnie the Pooh has always been catered towards children so the fact that these filmmakers have basically made Winnie the Pooh for adults in a slasher film, I thought it was fascinating.’
She’s just as excited for this to be the first of many horror retellings, expressing a want to see Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Rapunzel in a darker environment.
‘It’s been really exciting to see how this film has been received, and hopefully it’ll lead to more in the future for other independent films.’
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey lands in UK cinemas on March 10.