I'll admit it: Disney's original Pinocchio scared me as a kid.
Maybe that's why I was so excited for Pinocchio Unstrung. As someone who caught Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare in theaters, I was curious to see where Rhys Frake-Waterfield's twisted childhood universe would go next. What I wasn't expecting was just how much I would love this movie.
In a universe largely known for shock value, Pinocchio Unstrung is the first entry that feels like it has found the balance between outrageous horror and genuine storytelling.
Set inside an elite London prep school, the film follows a murderous Pinocchio as he embarks on a violent quest to become a real boy, guided by a sinister Cricket and created by Geppetto. It's a ridiculous premise on paper, but Frake-Waterfield leans into the fairy tale tragedy underneath the carnage and somehow makes it work.
The movie hooks you immediately with one of the coolest openings I've seen in a horror film this year. An incredible shadow puppet sequence, executed with practical effects, leads into a jaw-dropping title card that genuinely stopped me in my tracks. Before the story even begins, Pinocchio Unstrung announces itself as something more ambitious than audiences may be expecting.
That ambition extends to the creature effects. The Pinocchio puppet itself is fantastic. The animatronic work feels tangible and expressive in a way that modern CGI creatures often don't. There were moments where I was reminded of the Pinocchio from the old Jonathan Taylor Thomas film, which somehow makes his transformation into a horror icon even more unsettling.
More importantly, Pinocchio is oddly sympathetic.
Despite being the film's monster, there's an innocence to him that makes you immediately worry about what might happen. The emotional connection between Pinocchio and James, played by rising young actor Cameron Bell, gives the film a surprising amount of heart. Bell delivers one of the stronger child performances in recent horror memory, and the rest of the young cast prove equally solid. Even when some of the kids are written as exaggerated caricatures, they remain consistently entertaining and often become scene-stealers.
Richard Brake is, unsurprisingly, excellent. The horror veteran brings exactly the right amount of gravitas and eccentricity to Geppetto, grounding the film when it needs an emotional anchor. Anytime Brake is on screen, the movie instantly becomes more engaging.
For a movie about a homicidal puppet carving his way through a prep school, the music has no business being this good. Whimsical, playful, and at times surprisingly emotional, the score enhances nearly every scene. It helps sell both the fairy tale atmosphere and the darker horror elements, giving the movie a distinct personality that separates it from many of its low-budget peers.
Of course, horror fans aren't showing up exclusively for the drama.
The kills are absolutely brutal.
Some of them feel unnecessary from a story perspective, but when they're this creative and this gory, it's hard to complain. The practical effects team clearly had a blast dreaming up these sequences, resulting in some of the nastiest and most memorable kills in the entire Twisted Childhood Universe. Nothing feels off-limits here. The film gleefully pushes boundaries while maintaining a twisted sense of humor throughout.
There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments as well. One particularly awkward running joke involving Pinocchio asking questions about anatomy feels bizarre at first, but it ultimately pays off with one of the film's biggest laughs.
Tonally, Pinocchio Unstrung occupies a wonderfully strange space. At times it feels reminiscent of M3GAN. At others, it recalls those oddball direct-to-video horror movies that would randomly air on USA Network after dark in the 1990s. It would make a perfect double feature with films like Leprechaun, Dolly Dearest, or Rumpelstiltskin.
Most importantly, it feels crafted rather than assembled. The extensive use of practical effects and animatronics gives the film a texture and charm that many modern horror productions lack. You can feel the effort on screen, and that practical approach goes a long way toward making the experience memorable.
For a franchise that started as a novelty, Pinocchio Unstrung represents a substantial step forward. There's an actual story here. There are characters worth caring about. The performances are stronger, the filmmaking is more confident, and the horror is more inventive than anything we've seen from this universe so far.
It's gruesome, silly, darkly funny, and surprisingly heartfelt.
Quite possibly the horror surprise of the year.
Jessie Hobson