'Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare' Review
Image Source: YouTube
And so my quest continues. I’ve seen many killer childhood character films like this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one, among others. The day will come when I find a good one, one beyond “a bit fun.” I’m not looking for A-tier horror here, I just want something that I can look at and say “that was actually pretty solid.”
That day will come. It has to.
I’ve watched too many of these things not to accidentally run into a good one.
Yes, the day will come.
Image Source: YouTube
You don’t even need the caption for that photo to know what I’m saying.
sigh
Let’s get into Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare.
When the film was announced, my interest was actually piqued a little bit. You see, there are two ways to make a normally not psychotic character into a bloody psychopath. Firstly, you can create your own character and paint it to look like who you’re portraying. This is the route that they took in Blood and Honey, because there isn’t a vaguely negative bone in Pooh’s body, regardless of what adaptation you’re looking at. The second is to thoroughly analyze the character and see where you can plug “murderer” in. If you look at the original Peter Pan novel, there is all kinds of good stuff to work with there. Peter is kind of a psychopath in the book already. Basically, there are all kinds of stuff that the filmmakers could have used to twist the character of Peter Pan just a bit more to get a great take on the character that still had good roots, tying it to the original.
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Instead, they went with the former and came up with Pennywise combined with The Grabber from The Black Phone. Complete with the clown makeup for the first and the mask for the second.
But maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. The film, as one would expect, centers around Wendy Darling, whose brother Michael is kidnapped by Peter Pan. But it’s not Peter Pan, so to speak. It’s a mentally ill drug addict who believes that Neverland is a real place, and brainwashes one of the kids he kidnaps into his “Tinkerbell” and Hook is another kid he’s kidnapped that he mutilates with a hook for a hand. He just straight kills the rest of the kids he kidnaps, including a whole bus of them.
Instead of scary or even disturbing in a fun way, the whole film is just… unpleasant. It’s just “ooh, look at me! I’m so edgy because I kill kids!” The whole film has this grungy feel that makes it a slog to get through. The film is by the same filmmakers who brought you the (so far) two Blood and Honey films, and it’s missing even the bad fun of the first one and the intentional fun of the second.
Image Source: JoBlo
Oh. How fun.
The acting? Eh. Serviceable at best. The highlight of the film should be Martin Portlock as Peter Pan. He’s not, though. Again, he’s just a mix between Pennywise and The Grabber from Black Phone, but a pale imitation of the two. He has none of Pennywise’s fun, and certainly none of The Grabber’s almost tragic malice. The film really wanted Peter to be the highlight, but nothing separates him from a hundred other killers in schlocky slasher fare. Wendy should be the emotional core of the film. Instead, she’s just a bit boring. I will give credit that Megan Placito is giving it her all, but she has nothing to work with other than “worried about her brother and thinking about her future.”
I will give some credit to the kills as well. The opening kill is icky fun, and there are a few other decent ones. Gory kills are at least half of why these films even get made, so it’s nice to see that care was taken with a few of them. Ever since the success of the first Blood and Honey, these films have been getting bigger budgets, and that’s been put to good use on the screen.
Image Source: JoBlo
Overall, between merely serviceable acting, a joke of an antagonist, a boring story, and a lack of fun, this is certainly not one to recommend. It has some decent kills, but that’s hardly a reason to spend an hour and a half of your life on this. I had high hopes for this one (relatively speaking. Again, I wasn’t expecting Psycho here) but it fell well short. Learn from my mistakes, and skip this one.
Rating: 1/10
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