One Gory Scene in ‘Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare’ Was Virtually Too A lot for Me

Spoiler Alert: Spoilers comply with for Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare

The Twisted Childhood Universe is barely persevering with to develop. Following on the heels of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and its sequel, the boy who gained’t develop up is now the most recent sufferer in an ongoing quest to traumatize everybody’s beloved childhood reminiscences. This week sees the restricted run of Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, which will be the darkest installment within the TCU thus far and arguably the goriest.

Whereas the Blood and Honey movies brazenly embraced the aesthetic of ‘80s slashers like Friday the thirteenth, Neverland Nightmare attracts clear inspiration from trendy hits like The Black Telephone, It, and the dirty, disagreeable aesthetic of Eli Roth’s physique of labor. As such, in a tonal departure for the franchise, it’s unabashedly nasty and mean-spirited in its violence. But probably the most graphic scene of all, proper in the midst of the climax, might need gone too far.

Launch Date

February 24, 2025

Runtime

87 Minutes

Solid

Martin Portlock
, Megan Plactio
, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney
, Charity Kase
, Teresa Banham
, Equipment Inexperienced
, Jenny Miller
, Nicholas Woodeson
, Jay Robertson
, Campbell Wallace
, Chrissie Wunna
, Belinda Fenty
, Kierston Wareing
, Charlotte Coleman
, Frederick Dallaway
, Jamie Robertson
, Riccardo Carmelita
, Adam Speers
, Kelly Rian Sanson
, Lucas Allermann
, Ardy Yusuf
, Evelyn Morris
, Myles Perry
, Rhys Frake-Waterfield
, Lewis Santer
, Dan Allen
, Scott Chambers

Primary Style

Horror

Broaden

Tinker Bell Deserved Higher in ‘Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare’

Neverland Nightmare reimagines J.M. Barrie’s most well-known hero as a drug-addicted little one abductor. The movie’s plot kicks into gear when a bodily scarred Peter Pan abducts the now-adolescent Michael Darling, forcing his sister Wendy to return to his rescue. Scenes depicting Michael in captivity illustrate Peter’s newfound monstrousness; whereas promising to take the kids to “Neverland,” it’s clear that he intends to kill them. A few of his victims, most notably Captain Hook, stay alive however imprisoned in his basement to undergo.

However the cruelest destiny of all is undoubtedly that of Tinker Bell, right here reimagined as a transgender girl kidnapped by Peter years earlier than the occasions of the movie. To take care of her loyalty, he’s gotten her hooked on heroin, or at the least a pressure of the drug that he’s dubbed “pixie mud.” Because the film reaches its climax, and Wendy and Michael attempt to escape the hideout, it turns into clear that Tinker Bell is barely now studying of Peter’s murderous intentions and thus feels conflicted over her complicity.

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When she lastly confronts Peter over this, it results in the goriest sequence in Neverland Nightmare. A vengeful Peter slowly breaks each of Tinker Bell’s arms over a desk, and after leaving her on the bottom to writhe in ache, he chops off each of these limbs with a machete. Worse nonetheless, when she’s seen to be alive only some minutes later, Peter gleefully crushes her cranium beneath his boot, lastly placing her out of her distress.

To be honest, the sensible gore results on this sequence are very spectacular and undeniably leagues above the Blood and Honey movies on a technical stage. But this sequence additionally feels needlessly merciless, at the start in the way it fetishizes violence towards a transgender girl. However Tinker Bell’s loss of life can be drawn out far too lengthy, to the purpose the place the supposed grotesqueness turns into numbing, particularly once we’ve barely explored her interiority as a personality or what her flip towards Peter means to her emotionally. And particularly as a result of the movie rejects a tongue-in-cheek method in favor of a relentlessly nasty ambiance, it’s merely an excessive amount of to take.

‘Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare,’ Why So Critical?

However all of this speaks to the movie’s greater drawback, which is that its tone feels fully flawed. It’s develop into a recurring drawback all through the Twisted Childhood Universe’s installments; arguably, the largest promoting level for all of those movies is the novelty of seeing our favourite childhood icons reimagined as slasher villains. And but they all the time play their premises too straight, nearly as in the event that they’re too scared to totally decide to the setup’s inherent ridiculousness.

Take into account how Neverland Nightmare commits a just about similar sin to the primary Blood and Honey. Outdoors the names of some recognizable characters and worldbuilding parts, it has nearly nothing to do with the precise supply materials. The killer on this movie may very well be hypothetically swapped with the Grabber from The Black Telephone or Pennywise, and the impact could be precisely the identical. If something, it’s a disappointing regression for the TCU, after Blood and Honey II admittedly tried a bit more durable to be tongue-in-cheek and really have enjoyable with its premise. On the finish of the day, it appears like nothing greater than a generic slasher with a recognizable IP lazily slapped on simply to make a fast buck.

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But the depravity feels particularly misplaced in Neverland Nightmare, and particularly, Tinker Bell’s homicide appears to don’t have any function aside from being an inexpensive approach to get a shock from the viewers. Particularly for the reason that scene engages with inescapably loaded material simply to emphasise the brutality of a kill scene, it’s onerous to not escape the sensation that Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare would’ve completed good to loosen up. For a movie with such a schlocky premise, an ultra-grim and nihilistic tone appears like a basically misguided method to start with, particularly when it’s this tough to take.

Make no mistake: we need the Twisted Childhood Universe to seek out its footing (and possibly Pinocchio: Unstrung will dwell as much as the hype the crew has been constructing for it). However particularly because it’s demonstrably labored of their favor prior to now, they’d do effectively to grasp what their viewers actually desires to see — one thing enjoyable. Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is enjoying in theaters from January 13-15.