Running Time: 80 Minutes
Starring: Roxanne McKee, Tom Mulheron, Nicola Wright, Samira Mighty, Alex Cooke, Russell Geoffrey Banks
Ever since it began with 2023's Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, The Twisted Childhood Universe has been a financially successful venture which reimagines beloved children's characters as horror movie villains. As it builds towards next year's crossover film, Bambi: The Reckoning is the latest entry to reimagine a public domain character as a murderous figure.
Opening the film is Bambi's backstory, depicted in a lovely animated style within a storybook. It begins with the familiar tale, as the young fawn survives after his mother is shot dead by a hunter, leaving the titular character to grow up alone, meet a doe, and build a new family. More tragedy strikes, however, leaving Bambi alone and grieving once again. Things change when he drinks from a river contaminated by toxic waste, mutating the deer into a ravenous creature determined to get his revenge.
Meanwhile, Xana (Roxanne McKee) is accompanying her video-game obsessed son, Benji (Tom Mulheron), on a taxi ride. The intention was for Benji's father, Simon (Alex Cooke) to pickup his son so they can spend Thanksgiving with his family, but plans changed when the father did not turn up. Throwing a further wrench in the works is how the mother and son get in a car accident caused by the mutated Bambi, who stalks the pair as part of a deadly woodland game of survival.
Working off a screenplay by Rhys Warrington, director Dan Allen crafts a creature feature about nature striking back against those who destroy it, especially for financial gain. While these are interesting ideas for the film to play with, the little exploration within the slim runtime leaves it to feel like lip-service. The focus is largely on the rampage of Bambi, something that leads to carnage inflicted upon his victims, although the distractingly rough visual effects hamper these moments.
As for the plot surrounding the gruesome kills, it is a mess. There is little rhyme or rhythm to how events flow into one-another, leaving it to feel like the ideas were cobbled together without actual structure around them. This includes an accidental death that is glossed over rather quickly, as it all feels forced and leaves one questioning the characters' capabilities. While many of their contentious decisions can be explained away as panicking out of fear, there is a point where it crosses over into frustration.
While the actors do their best with the material, there is only so much that they can do with such uninspiring characterisation. The result leaves these poorly sketched figures to feel like, whether speaking about disdainful family members or unnuanced antagonists, they exist only as delivery systems for blunt dialogue. This is a shame, because there is an interesting mirror between these parents doing whatever possible to protect their children, and this is what helps make Bambi: The Reckoning feel like a step-up from this cinematic universe's beginnings.
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