Prepare to have all your strings pulled hard by the outstanding fractured fairy tale horror film Pinocchio: Unstrung, written and directed by the micro-budget massacre master Rhys Frake-Waterfield. Poor James (Cameron Bell). At a young age, the boy has had a belly full of death. First his parents were taken from him in a tragic accident, forcing him to go live with his grandfather, Geppetto (Richard Blake). Then James loses his best friend at school to a slow death from cancer, and James’s heart wastes away with his pal’s health. To cheer him up, Geppetto gets busy in the basement workshop that James is forbidden to enter.
One day, he introduces lonely young James to Pinocchio (Jude Evan Lloyd), a wooden puppet of a boy who walks and talks. Pinocchio is eager to be the best buddy James has ever had, while James is a little creeped out. At night, in the back of the basement workshop, Pinocchio finds the twisted puppet attempt, the Wood Mother (Emma Tate). The Wood Mother, along with her helper, the Cricket (Robert Englund), convinces Pinocchio that to be a true friend to James, he needs to protect him. To do that, the puppet boy needs to murder everyone who is a threat to James, including that mean dentist (Belinda Fenty), who pulled out James’s tooth.
Pinocchio: Unstrung is a B-movie that deviously delivers better filmmaking than many A-pictures. I’m not suggesting that it shirks its B-movie credentials, as the splatter showcased is gruesomely awesome. I am talking bright red dismemberments; the kind mother used to make, if your mother was Lucio Fulci. The amazing gore sequences will have your eyebrow arching up past your hairline, even if you are a connoisseur of the art of violence. Pinocchio: Unstrung has the best puppet splatter since Peter Jackson’s Meet The Feebles. What is done with the pointy nose will revolt you.
“The puppet boy needs to murder everyone who is a threat to James.”
Frake-Waterfield makes all the kill sequences resonate with the blackest humor, yet keeps everything as serious and grim as a child’s grave. This increases the creep factor of the star of the show, the decrepit-looking wooden boy. Avoiding digital paste-overs, Frake-Waterfield instead gives us practical effects-based puppetry. You can feel the splinters entering your eyelids. The puppet’s movements, particularly the lethal ones, have their own hypnotic charm, as this is some master puppeteering. Even when the budget limitations show a bit, Pinocchio: Unstrung can’t lose, as it lives in a spot where the artificiality increases the realism. Now is that some cool s**t or what?
Frake-Waterfield and his super producer, Scott Jeffrey (who made a crackerjack mutant rat movie several years ago) ignited the public domain horror revolution a few years ago with these ultra-dark takes on Winnie-The-Pooh. After additional entries by other filmmakers of twisted Disney fairy stories that could make Angela Carter seem behaved, Frake-Waterfield gives his first non-Pooh chapter in the broader Pooh-niverse with Pinocchio: Unstrung. Proving the honey pot is not a crutch, Frake-Waterfield makes the successful move out of the 100 Acre Wood but manages to keep the wood real. Tying it in with the other movies is actor Peter DeSouza-Feighoney’s Michael Darling from Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, making an appearance here. There may have been other tie-ins that I will catch the next few times I re-watch this movie while getting baked.
For a story that is old enough to be public domain, Pinocchio: Unstrung is, at its core, a timely revisionist take on the vigilante genre. Far from glorifying illegal aliens who profit from human trafficking, like Citizen Vigilante, we have some real steel-toed vigilante commentary, as we saw back in the day in The Star Chamber. Sure, achieving justice by questionable means seems enticing, but what happens if you act before knowing all the facts? What if those facts are being manipulated by horrible people who have aims far lower than righting wrongs? For a dark version of Pinocchio, Frake-Waterfield completely nailed everything that could be nailed. The only thing I missed was the island of bad boys, which could appear in a sequel shot in Oatman, Arizona, the old mining town run by donkeys. You will get so strung out on Pinocchio: Unstrung, you will need strings to hold you down from watching it again and again.
"…the best puppet splatter since Peter Jackson's Meet The Feebles."
