Pinocchio: Unstrung is sordid and cynical; a brazen, shoddy exploitation flick with even cheaper ethics. Whatever macabre ingenuity it may have had is backstabbed by its crass, juvenile sensibilities, resulting in shameful vacuity. The film’s B-Movie handicaps make me want to cut it some slack, but the whole experience just left me miserable.
Pinocchio: Unstrung is the fifth entry in the Twisted Childhood Universe, an independent franchise kickstarted by 2023’s Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. The central gimmick sounds morbidly fun on paper – taking childhood classics that have entered the public domain and giving them slasher parody makeovers. However, the callow juggling of puerile comedy and tacky, amateur horror makes these films hard to tolerate for anyone other than slasher obsessives. Blood and Honey writer-director Rhys Frake-Waterfield helms Pinocchio: Unstrung, and it falls back on the same exhausting misanthropy that got Blood and Honey labelled one of the 21st century’s worst films.
Naturally, the narrative concerns the titular wooden boy desiring to become human – the Frankensteinian connotations of the original fable actually lend themselves to horror quite well. Set in the modern day, Pinocchio is once again made by Geppetto (Richard Brake), primarily to help Geppetto’s grandson James (Cameron Bell) process the death of his best friend Zack. The similarities to 2024’s M3GAN leap out immediately, but Geppetto’s intentions seem to work, as Zack’s passing is forgotten about until the plot suddenly requires it.
Pinocchio is ignorant of the world around him, an innocence that’s ripe for manipulation. Some conniving words from a fellow wooden creature in Geppetto’s basement, and his witnessing of James being mistreated repeatedly, push Pinocchio over the edge. Believing he’s doing good deeds to protect James, Pinocchio embarks on a gruesome killing spree against those who’ve wronged his friend, collecting organs, teeth and skin so that he can become “a real boy”. Even a dentist (Belinda Fenty) who merely did her job by pulling James’s bad tooth falls victim to Pinocchio’s bloodlust, her death being an extended sequence that the film plays off as funny but is, in actuality, cruel and repulsive.
Had Pinocchio: Unstrung committed solely to horror or comedy, it might’ve worked. There’s a place in the canon for both graphic horrors (The Substance) and mean-spirited comedies (War of the Roses). But the film tries to have it both ways, its dual genres undermining each other as a consequence. The ungainly dialogue celebrating the removal of guts and pouring of blood doesn’t add humour – only a gauche, callous sadism. The jokes are quintessentially adolescent, a stark contrast to the gratuitous horror. This is a film that thinks swear words and sex references are the height of hilarity. An early scene sees Pinocchio reading about human anatomy. One guess for what part of the male body he fixates on.
Furthermore, there has to be a thematic point to what’s being depicted. Even Cannibal Holocaust, one of history’s most controversial films, can be read as a commentary on extreme consumerism. Frake-Waterfield’s script understandably tries to assign explorations of morality and naivety to Pinocchio’s characterisation. Pity the examination is shallow at best, confined solely to rushed scenes, and cliched, hamfisted dialogue on individuality.
From the midpoint onwards, Pinocchio: Unstrung is little more than a collection of sickening, unconvincing gore that could be reworked into any order with minimal difference to the story. The only times it stops are for sloppy exposition – complete with a conveniently abandoned film reel that explains the twist to James – and vulgar scenes of perverted misogyny. Pinocchio spends much of the film killing others, but that doesn’t stop him from gawking at a naked teenage girl in the shower. An evil, atrociously animated Cricket (Robert Englund) provides gendered, derogatory commentary. You genuinely feel unclean sitting there.
There’s one undeniably solid element to the filmmaking. Despite the low budget, Frake-Waterfield and team use practical effects for many of the setpieces. Chief among them is the puppetry of Pinocchio. There are still quibbles that break the immersion – the mouth movements are disjointed and don’t match up with the clumsy dubbing, a fault that’s true of the human characters at times too. But the art department made a creepily detailed prop out of Pinocchio himself, his physicality brought to life through an array of puppeteers. The use of shadows and paper animation creates atmosphere in the opening title sequence, as do select interior locations such as Geppetto’s mansion. Credit should still be given where it’s due.
Sadly, the surrounding craft actively betrays this. On top of everything I’ve highlighted, the editing, and even basic continuity from scene to scene, is appalling. Characters and props change positions constantly. Klutzy cutaways make the lack of budget abundantly clear (namely during a car crash), and the storyline is strung together so haphazardly that entire scenes appear to be missing. How else to explain the shattering conclusions the characters come to, despite seemingly minimal context? Neither IMDb nor the end credits name a script supervisor for the film. Maybe there wasn’t money in the budget for one, or perhaps no script supervisors wanted to come aboard. Either way, this could be a case study on why the continuity department is vital to any successful production.
I know these films have an audience, and maybe I could be a better sport. But I’m sorry, I hated Pinocchio: Unstrung. I hated it because its ambitions seem based purely in cash-grab opportunism; because its immature tendencies override its creative endeavours; because it’s not funny; because its characters are stupid deplorables, and because its horror serves no function beyond voyeuristic sleaze. One can admire the practical effects, but that’s of little comfort when it’s in service to artistic, even moral, bankruptcy. It left me in perpetual anger and sadness for 80 minutes straight, epilogued by an end-credits reel of behind-the-scenes footage showcasing Frake-Waterfield and crew giddily laughing at work. At least they were having fun.
Pinocchio: Unstrung is playing in cinemas nationwide from July 24.
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