“All children, except one, grow up.” The opening line to JM Barrie’s Peter Pan is already plenty creepy (especially those commas). Ripe for exploitation even. Now that the copyright has expired on the book, in the USA at any rate, someone has gone ahead and mined the children’s classic it for its horror potential. Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is the result, a gory and unsettling tale of kidnap, drug abuse, dismemberment, screaming and lots of blood.
We get a flavour of what’s to come in the pre-credits sequence. A young boy is charmed at the circus by a clown twisting balloons into animal shapes. Later the same boy is accosted at home by the same clown emerging from a trapdoor in the floor. His mother intervenes, and for her trouble winds up with her scalp removed. The boy, whose name is James Hook, is dragged off to who knows where.
In the “it’s happening again” way of modern horror, the action now shifts 15 years into the future. The still-active Peter targets the Darling family and abducts young Michael (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), forcing older sister Wendy (Megan Placito) to get in touch with her inner action hero and go on the offensive.
Children die in this film. A busload of them are butchered at one point. But Wendy is its focus. Placito is charismatic and easy on the eye, looks good drenched in blood and presents Wendy as a modern young woman doing her best but entirely out of her depth in Peter’s Neverland lair. Wendy is a “final girl” of sorts – there is a white T shirt there somewhere – one who is resourceful and remarkably resilient. Throw her at a wall and she picks herself up again ready to re-enter the fray.
While we’re on implausibility, how come Wendy can find Peter’s base so easily when the police cannot? I have no idea, to be honest, and I watched the film last night and took notes. The plot is not 100 per cent watertight, I’d suggest, but quite honestly it doesn’t matter. Young woman in jeopardy is the idea, and writer/director Scott Chambers is all over that.
There’s a bit of Scream (masks) in here, maybe a touch of Eyes Without a Face (mannequins), a bit of It (the clown), even, perhaps, a sniff of Stitches, the under-regarded Brit horror starring Ross Noble as a vengeful children’s entertainer back from the dead. Chambers himself has claimed a different mood board of references – the French horror High Tension (aka Switchblade Romance) and The Black Phone. OK, credible. How about adding another French horror, Martyrs, to that mix?
This is the third in a franchise of horrorsploitation from producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield. His Twisted Childhood Universe takes much-loved intellectual property conveniently out of copyright and gives it a good kicking. So far Frake-Waterfield has given us Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (winner of five Razzies including Worst Picture, critically reviled, made a load of money), its sequel (less reviled, good box office) and now this. Another suggested name for the franchise is the Poohniverse – please god, no.
This is the first one directed by Chambers and he’s not lined up to do any of the upcoming additions to the franchise – Bambi: The Reckoning, Pinocchio: Unstrung, Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble. He probably doesn’t have time. When he’s not acting or directing he’s producing – 114 films in eight years. He’s in his mid-20s and must be living on methamphetamine.
Paedophilia has obviously been discussed in production meetings and a conclusion has been reached. It’s conspicuous by its absence. There’s not a suggestion of sexual impropriety. Maybe it doesn’t need to be said. JM Barrie himself, a grown man who liked to hang out with children, has had the accusations punted his way often enough down the decades.
Instead the weirdness comes from the co-dependent relationship of the disfigured and clearly not ever-youthful Peter (Martin Portlock, who broke through playing a witch on TV talent show Britain’s Got Talent) and his bedraggled, heroin-using transgender companion Tinker Bell (Kit Green, graduate of the “queer nightlife collective” Duckie) – they make a fine pair.
Considering the Pooh movies really did get a pasting (not seen them), PPNN is actually surprisingly effective. Spins its wheels a bit in the middle section. But good production values. A vibe shifting between the disquieting and the grimly bloody. Performances, particularly by Placito, Portlock and Green, full of crackle and pop. I liked it. Bring on Bambi: The Reckoning.
Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
