Stream It Or Skip It?

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare (now streaming on Peacock) is the third entry in the “Twisted Childhood Universe,” preceded by two Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey movies, and merely typing that makes me want to just… give up. You know, like the final girl in a horror movie who’s on the brink of utter paralyzing despair and is ready to just accept that she’s going to die sooner than she wants. But she eventually takes a deep breath, summons some juice, and finds a way to turn the slasher-killer into kibbles ‘n bits. And so go I, freshly blood-spattered from a viewing of this heavily calculated, gore-stricken, grim-toned blasphemization of J.M. Barrie’s beloved novel Peter Pan (and its countless movie and TV adaptations), with “TCU” creators and producers Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Scott Chambers – the latter directs this one – all but begging, BEGGING me to use the word “pan” with extreme prejudice.

The Gist: Neverland was a perfect utopia – until reality hit! The fabled land populated by children what never get old exists wholly in the mind of Peter (Martin Portlock), a totally wholesome clown who hands Cute Little Timmy (Holden M N Smith) in the audience a balloon animal that MARKS HIM FOR DEATH. Or something worse, as it turns out. That evening, Peter totally Pennywises cute little Timmy, chatting up the lad from the crack in the hatch to the cellar, then snatching him. Cute Little Timmy will be Peter’s new Lost Boy, although what exactly that means, we just don’t wanna know, right? Cute Little Timmy’s mom, despite making a filet o’ face of Peter’s cheek, doesn’t survive the scalping she gets in return, so adios mama, and we bear down for a narrative time jump.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER. The Darling family readies for young Michael’s (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) birthday. But first he’ll have to let his big sis Wendy (Megan Placito) take him to school, which sucks, because there are bullies and only his one pal Joey (Hardy Yusuf) as an ally. Wendy’s taking a gap year to cut hair, and she has a dingus of a boyfriend. These are important details! Character development!! Feel some emotions for these people!!! If you don’t, you won’t be invested in their inevitable plight, which of course means Peter will do a little snatchola of Michael and take him back to his dismal lair full of grime and chiggers and mannequins covered with sheets of plastic so they cast bizarre shadows. Notably, Peter’s face is all scarred from the fileting, and now he looks like Grima Wormtongue with some Freddy Krueger flair. Peter lives with his right-hand crazyperson, an either cross-dressing or trans Tinker Bell (Kit Green), who’s hooked on heroin, believing it’s fairy dust. Oof.

Peter has delusions about being able to fly, and sometimes a shadow version of the Peter Pan that’s more familiar to us (yes, think Disney) comes to life to encourage him. But in the real world, he’s just a serial killer of children – there’s a truly upbeat scene featuring him and a busful of schoolkids that Grandma will love – with a serious deformity that renders his Christian name hideously ironic. Right: Don’t ask. Please. Just – don’t. Wendy takes it upon herself to find and rescue her brother, an endeavor that finds her being an utterly illogical coward at times, and at others, a hearty fight-backer with blood spattered all over her like Alison Lohman in Drag Me to Hell. Consistency of demeanor only matters when it really matters, you know? Either way, in this movie, something reigns. You know what it is. Chaos, baby! It reignnnnnnnsssssssssssss!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Peter is highly reminiscent of Heath Ledger’s Joker in vocal tone and facial blecch. The overall tone is Terrifier-derived, which therefore classifies Neverland Nightmare as Miserable Shit. Peter Pan and Wendy is pretty good. Hook is not. 

Performance Worth Watching: There’s little debating Portlock’s commitment to being as nasty as possible. That’s worth something, I guess.

Memorable Dialogue: Peter: “What I’m giving you for your birthday is the greatest gift a child could ask for.”

Sex and Skin: A couple of full-nude shots that are of the pretty-f—ing-far-from-OK variety.

Our Take: Welp, at least it’s better than Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. That movie looked like a bucket of pennies after half of them spilled out, and made one cease believing that things like camera angles and editing actually exist. Neverland Nightmare looks like two or three buckets of pennies, with most of it spent on extra ketchup, and a jug of Crisco to give the latex facial prosthetics that special sweaty sheen. There’s a veneer of competence to the filmmaking that was more shocking than the kills, which consist of rote chokings, suffocations and stabbings acquired nice ‘n cheap at the local Goodwill. And when Peter’s really feeling mean, he unleashes – gasp – crank phone calls. I yawn! Long and wide!

Director Chambers compensates for the lack of creativity by dumping buckets of slippery slippery blood all over the sets, and maintaining a tone typically reserved for a search for bodies at a bombing site. There are no tongues in cheeks in Neverland Nightmare. It is dead serious – and a dead snooze, at least until the big climactic gauntlet o’ splatter that Wendy must run, bones snapping and limbs butchered and eyes gouged with the least amount of horror-movie fun possible, which is to say, it’s no fun whatsoever. 

So what we have here is a serial-killer/abduction thriller crossed with a bottom-rung slasher, complete with innocent children being tossed into a creepy van and a villain with a soliloquy fetish. Chambers and Frake-Waterfield are using this flick, the Blood and Honeys, the recently released Bambi: The Reckoning and upcoming warped takes on Pinocchio, Mary Poppins, Snow White and others to construct their own no-taste public-domain cinematic universe, all building up to Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble, which is something I wish I made up. I mean, isn’t it HILARIOUS and oh so SUBVERSIVE when someone bastardizes the tar out of beloved kiddie IP? How ingenious! There’s a referential nod in Neverland Nightmare where a character wears a Blood and Honey shirt, which, hey, clever self-awareness alert siren siren alarm ding-dong-ding lookit the joke! They know it’s a joke, we know it’s a joke, it’s obvious it’s a joke. Too bad it’s a bad joke.

Our Call: Never! SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.