In the end, it was worth the death threats and vitriol in some corners, as horror Pooh fans have accumulated to a level you can probably call cult now. Likewise for them at least, it was shot on a luxurious 12 days (it’s usually around 7). This is on a budget reputed to be somewhere between 30 and 100k but more likely the lower end of that scale.

The fact it kept building to a worldwide theatrical run, grossing over $4 million (and counting) in theatres alone is amazing. Quite the level of viral buzz they did receive must have been a massive surprise, but that led to additional shoots, increased promotion and higher hopes. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, it would have been hoped, would gather interest but Jeffrey and writer/director/producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield probably thought more than usual interest might have meant one or two festivals and a tidy impact on AVOD (advertising video on demand). He’s the hardest working fella in the business, following a trail blazed by the late great Andrew Jones, in producing movies for well under $100k (closer to $30k), and in most cases with distribution already secured. By this point, it had been shot, likely in keeping with the previous works of British indie producer Scott Jeffrey’s previous works. No sooner did word get out about this horror version of Winnie the Pooh, than it went madly viral. Inevitably the biggest successes lead to a swathe of copycats and every wildly successful found footage horror (an effective micro staple) leads to dozens in its slipstream but, whether slated or adored by critics, they give the rest of us in the indie filmmaking arena, hope. Let’s start by looking at the talk of the microbudget town of late… Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Think back to The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and more recently Terrifier (and more so its sequel) and Skinamarink.

This means that many have to beg, (hopefully not) steal and borrow to scrape enough pennies together and willing participants to put together a film and there’s (passing quality control permitting) always a place to put it…and if you don’t pass QC, there’s always YouTube.Įvery now and again a microbudget film overperforms hugely. What constitutes a microbudget? Well, how long is a piece of string?Īs it is, though streaming has effectively driven down the purchase value of films, and thus the sureness of finance for rogue upcoming indie filmmakers, it has also widened the distribution options hugely. It’s a near-unjumpable chasm between $5 million budgets and that limited pool of films which cost over $100 million. Right now the differential between the big studio pictures and what is below seems to be huge. As Flickering Myth launches into the world of microbudget film production, we look at five recent microbudget horror movies you need to see…

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