Horror Movie Review: Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death and Porridge (2024)

The success of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey ensured a ton of copycat horrors utilising beloved public domain stories, characters, and more, was inevitable. Even though the success of that film was a bit of a phenomenon, others have tried to capture that lightening in a bottle, and most have failed. Not just because many are lazy, low-budget, and unimaginative watches, but because many are just really bad.

One such film is director Craig Rees’ (he co-wrote it with Robert Southey too) Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death and Porridge. If you had any doubt that this film was going to do everything possible to rip off Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the title alone makes sure that disappears in a poof of smoke.

Based on the 19th-century English fairy tale, Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death and Porridge reimagines the titular character as a masked wearing psychopath with the three bears (three humans with fake bear heads as masks) as her murderous henchmen. They all live in a nice country home but are out killing when a group get lost, decide to break in and stay for the night. Returning home, Goldilocks and the bears are not too happy to see that someone has been sitting in their chairs, someone has been sleeping in their beds, and someone has been eating their porridge.

Which, of course, means it’s time to murder them all in quite violent and graphic gory style. This is probably the aspect of the film that is most enjoyable, but even violence without reason, loses its lustre and Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death and Porridge has no reason to exist at all.

These are harsh words, but good god, this is a terrible film in every sense of the word. Not only is the story exceptionally light, yet still told in incoherent fashion, the pacing is excruciatingly slow. Staying engaged isn’t an issue, what is an issue is the fact that it doesn’t manage to engage at all. You may think this is exaggeration, but the absurdity of the story is only matched by how poor the direction is.

Direction that extends to the characters and the actors that play them. Faces with names and that’s about it, there is no such thing as a defined character here. Not that it would matter though as the majority of the cast are shockingly bad, so bad that it starts to feel like it’s being done on purpose. The cringe-worthy dialogue, the wooden responses, the lack of energy and interest in anything they are doing, it had to be on purpose, right? One awful actor is possible, heck, in a film like this it’s expected, but most of the cast? That falls at the feet of the writing and the directing, even if there’s no excuse for so much of the acting to be this dreadful.

By the halfway point, with almost nothing having actually happened, most will have completely checked out. Long before the best thing about the film, Olga Solo, comes along to deliver solid psycho mania with her portrayal of Goldilocks. However, take that praise with a pinch of salt as she still has to deliver some of the worst dialogue heard in a modern horror in some time.

Expectations were already low, but goodness, Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death and Porridge still manages to outdo them. One of the worst films of the year, if not longer.