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The Twisted Childhood Universe (also known as the TCU, and absolutely nothing else), has been delivering distorted versions of our favorite childhood tales to varying degrees of success since 2023 with its inaugural film, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Now, a new entry joins the franchise in Pinocchio Unstrung, offering a bloody take on the puppet who wants nothing more than to be a real boy. If you’ve seen any of the other films and have been picking up what they’ve been putting down, you’re in for a similar serving here (albeit a much more visually appealing one).
Like the Terrifier franchise, these are the kind of horror films that require a part of your brain to go dormant — or at least a little bit fuzzy. We’re not here for interesting storytelling or thoughtful conversations. We’re here to watch beloved childhood icons wreak havoc as practical blood spatters across the wall. Pinocchio Unstrung delivers that kind of mayhem in spades as the young puppet (voiced by Jude-Evan Lloyd) mows down anyone — mostly children, if you’re squeamish about that kind of thing — that might be a threat to his best friend James (Cameron Bell).
Pinocchio is, as is customary, created by Gepetto (Richard Brake). However, the means of the puppet’s creation are not immediately apparent. Gepetto doesn’t have any of his usual trappings and, in fact, acts as the guardian to young James after his parents die tragically. He’s also joined by Cricket (voiced by Robert Englund) but, like the story as a whole, this isn’t the conscience you remember from the stories. Pinocchio Unstrung does fill in the blanks, of course, but those are details best saved for the film.
After getting some brief-but-obligatory exposition out of the way, the movie sprints off to the races. At a blissfully tight 80 minutes, Pinocchio Unleashed seems to be the first film in the TCU to really understand what its audience is here for — quick foundation, a bunch of gnarly kills, a paper thin plot followed by a snappy finale and off home you go! They’re not intelligent movies, but they’re certainly creative when it comes to their murderous mayhem.
All of the money the TCU has miraculously raked in over the years is on display here. The Pinocchio puppet is the exact right combination of endearing and unnerving, and even the digital Cricket looks far better than anticipated. Most importantly, all of the kills look immaculate.The practical effects showcased throughout Pinocchio’s killing spree are all delightfully gooey, leaving the viewer excited to learn how the next bratty kid will find themselves offed. One of the sledgehammer blows results in a wound that will grate if you’re a stickler for ballistics but, again, that’s a part of your brain that’s best left on standby in this franchise.
Pinocchio Unstrung sees Rhys Frake-Waterfield return as both director and writer for the first time since the original outing, but this time with much better success than the film that created the TCU’s foundation. A tight narrative is wrapped around a bunch of kills that look solid enough to forgive the fake flames that make an appearance in the third act. Drake-Waterfield and I don’t share anything adjacent to the same sense of humor, but there are plenty of exploitative bits that, while exhausting on a personal level, will delight anyone who enjoys the scandal of it all.
Though I’m generally far from the target audience for the TCU’s nihilistic approach to childhood wonder, Pinocchio Unstrung is undeniably the strongest entry yet. There’s something really refreshing in knowing that previous films made buckets of cash and, rather than pocketing it and skipping off into the sunset, the team elected to put a hearty hunk of it back into their project. It’ll be interesting if the same can be said for their upcoming projects — Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 and Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble — show the same care so far as their digital offerings are concerned, but no reason to suspect that Frake-Waterfield and fellow producer Scott Chambers will do anything differently. If they do, we’ll always have (the strangely buff) Cricket.
Movie Score: 3/5
