22nd Jan2025

‘Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare’ Review

by Jim Morazzini

Stars: Martin Portlock, Megan Placito, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Kit Green, Kelly Rian Sanson, Chrissie Wunna, Nicola Wright | Written by Scott Chambers, Rhys Frake-Waterfield | Directed by Scott Chambers

The most recent entry in the so-called Poohniverse, and the first one not to feature Pooh, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, has arrived. With Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey and its sequel both being steaming piles of, well, poo, I was going to skip this. But surprisingly, I started hearing quite a few positive things about it.

While most of the films that director Scott Chambers, aka Scott Jeffrey has been involved with are borderline unwatchable fare like Dragon Fury, he does have the occasional entertaining effort like The Gardener to his credit, so it wasn’t entirely beyond the realm of possibility that Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare would actually be decent. Hoping for the best, I decided to give it a chance.

The film certainly comes out swinging, with Peter Pan (Martin Portlock; Wolf Manor, A Fluorescent Sky) slicing a young woman’s foot in half and scalping her before abducting her young brother. It’s a shocking start and manages to show more blood and gore than most of the director’s previous films combined.

Fifteen years later, Wendy Darling (Megan Placito; Transparent, The Salt Path) takes her brother Michael (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney; The Pope’s Exorcist, Christmas with the Pups 2: Pups Alone) to school. When she comes back to pick him up, he’s not there, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell (Kit Green; The Blazing Cannons, The Queen’s Sister) have abducted him and taken him to Neverland.

Where the Winnie the Pooh films had kept the residents of the Hundred Acre Wood true to their origin, even if they looked like generic masked slashers, Chambers and co-writer Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s (The Area 51 Incident, Pinocchio Unstrung) script for Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare has almost no connection beyond the characters’ names to J.M. Barrie’s original. Rather than “The Boy Who Never Grew Up” Peter is a psychotic, drug-addicted adult. Tinkerbell is a transsexual whose “fairy dust” is heroin. And, while the boys he abducts never grow old, it’s not because of the magic of Neverland, it’s because he kills them.

So rather than a supernatural horror, Wendy’s quest to rescue her brother turns into a more traditional slasher tale than anything else. Granted, it borrows the imagery of supernatural films like IT for scenes where he wears clown makeup and holds a red balloon to lure a victim to him. Another scene where he kills a shopkeeper shows the influence of Terrifier 2. There are also hints of A Nightmare on Elm Street in Peter’s disfigured face and choice of victims, along with The Black Phone and The People Under the Stairs worked into the script as well.

As well as being derivative, the film is also somewhat confused in its approach to the material. It sets up a storyline that’s meant to be shocking and then keeps the scene that would actually be shocking, like the killing of a school bus full of youngsters, off-screen. All the violence we see is inflicted on adults, somewhat negating the impact of making the character a child killer in the first place. Imagine A Nightmare on Elm Street where we didn’t see Freddy kill the Elm Street kids.

The violence we do see, while not as extreme as the filmmakers want you to believe, is fairly nasty and well-rendered with practical effects. But, just with the deaths of Peter’s child victims, the worst of the violence against adults is kept off-screen.

The performances are fairly decent, even though there’s little for the actors to do beyond acting either scary or scared. Kit Green has some good moments as Tinkerbell begins to see through Peter’s gaslighting and realize just what he’s been doing all these years, but that’s about it. Those who’ve seen several of Chambers’ previous films may catch appearances by regulars Kelly Rian Sanson (Snake Hotel, Pterodactyl 2), Chrissie Wunna (Demonic Plastic Surgeon M.D., Jurassic Triangle) and Nicola Wright (Witches of Amityville Academy, The Curse of Humpty Dumpty) among the cast.

Overall, while not as good or disturbing as it should have been, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is much better than either of the previous films in this loosely connected franchise. And, as a slasher, it’s certainly watchable despite its flaws and a last minute twist that’s more laughable than frightening. Hopefully next time they’ll fully embrace the disturbing ideas they raised.

**½  2.5/5

ITN Distribution and Iconic Events Releasing have debuted Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare in theatres across the US through January 23rd, with international dates and a digital release to follow.
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Review originally posted on Voices From the Balcony
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