Pinocchio: Unstrung review – public domain slasher turns beloved puppet into sick serial killer

The so-called Twisted Childhood Universe, a bad-taste British slasher franchise, continues to get mileage out of turning beloved kids’ characters into sicko serial killers. After a pair of satanic Winnie the Pooh movies, we now get a cash-in of Pinocchio, directed again by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, and like the Pooh duo, it’s a nasty piece of work. Cheerfully nasty, in fact, as it goes for black comedy laughs by bumping off characters in grisly drop-a-dumbbell-on-your-face scenarios. But it’s not-so-nice nasty as well, by being smirking and unpleasant; the kind of film that makes a joke out of the overweight kid puffing on an inhaler.

The setting is a stately pile in the English countryside where inventor Geppetto (Richard Brake) lives with his preteen grandson James (Cameron Bell), whose parents were killed in an accident. James has also tragically lost a friend to childhood cancer. So Geppetto makes him Pinocchio, carved of out of wood and brought to life – a friend who will never die. Like Chucky in the Child’s Play movies, Pinocchio is a creepy doll with a malevolent little face and rictus grin – nicely in fact. Poor James is terrified when they meet, but the two become fast friends. And there are some juvenile gags as Pinocchio learns about real boys, noting in an encyclopedia that Geppetto has missed a vital bit of anatomy. One day, James sneaks Pinocchio into his school bag, and tells him not to move. But when James is picked on by bullies and mutters, “I wish they were all dead,” Pinocchio does not stick to instructions.

One of the problems is that the yucky bits feel like replays of slasher cliches with not much in the way of satire. There is a scene, too, that should have raised alarm bells with someone along the way: a female character who is playing a schoolkid gets a slasher moment topless in the shower (not before the camera pans across her naked silhouette behind the curtain). And at a technical level, the gore seems too fake to be properly disgusting. The gruesome moments might get a few chuckles and guffaws from the audience – no gasps though. Can a film ever be a proper horror if it fundamentally fails to deliver any shocks?