LONDON — When 'Pinocchio: Unstrung' premiered at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival on April 11, the question hanging over the auditorium was whether the Twisted Childhood Universe — the British micro-budget cycle that began with 'Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey' — could ever be more than a provocation. Three months later, with the film now in 505 American theaters via Viva Pictures and in UK cinemas through Altitude, the answer has arrived in the form of the franchise's first genuinely favorable critical consensus.
The film stands at 75% on Rotten Tomatoes from 20 reviews, having debuted at a perfect score across its first ten — a first for the five-film cycle, and a meaningful marker for writer-director Rhys Frake-Waterfield and producing partner Scott Chambers of Jagged Edge Productions.
The reason begins in the workshop. Rather than a digital creation, the film's Pinocchio is a fully practical animatronic realized under Todd Masters, the Emmy-winning effects veteran whose credits include the puppet Chucky of 2019's 'Child's Play.' The choice pays dividends on screen: the creature shares physical space with its cast, and the camera can hold on it without the seams showing. Variety's Guy Lodge judged the result "something of a triumph for the film's puppetry and animatronic departments," while Bloody Disgusting's Daniel Kurland wrote that "it's a genuine love letter to practical effects and old-fashioned animatronics instead of being some cheap CG slog."
Frake-Waterfield's screenplay reframes Carlo Collodi's 1883 fable as a corruption study: Richard Brake's Geppetto carves the marionette as a companion for his orphaned grandson, and the puppet's untutored morality hardens into violence against anything it deems a threat to the boy. Jude Evan Lloyd voices the creature; Robert Englund voices the Cricket, the story's poisoned conscience, in the tradition of his most famous work. Peter DeSouza-Feighoney reprises Michael Darling from 'Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare,' knitting the cycle toward its announced crossover, 'Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble,' currently in pre-production.
This desk's own assessment: 9.0 of 10 — the finest hour of the cycle by a wide margin, and among the year's most persuasive arguments for practical creature work. Commercial returns opened modestly — roughly $296,000 in the first frame domestically, per Box Office Mojo — but pictures built on craftsmanship of this order tend to find their audience over the long run.
But the trajectory is the story. A cycle that began as a copyright stunt has produced a film whose effects work, casting and construction are being discussed on their merits. That is a trade learned in public, and 'Pinocchio: Unstrung' is its first finished lesson.
Comments (33)