Bambi: The Reckoning Review
Sometimes I feel like I'm not a horror movie fan by choice. In this day and age there's enough horror in life, the world and everything to take the longing, if not fun, out of watching horror films. This especially as Public Domain horror is now becoming a new subgenre all things considered. But, for the first time, after going through two children's icons, Pooh and Mickey, does it make sense with Bambi. Don't get me wrong: I was a fairly big Bambi nut in my early childhood. And yet that's what not many people seem to know about Bambi: its origins, which, if you dig hard enough, were tailor made for the genre. Granted, even the contents of the Disney version were dark in their own familiar way. As for what it is compared to other horror films it's easy to say it's a concrete version of Wendigo. From the fact it's a horror movie about a deerlike monster to the unsubtle deconstruction/reconstruction of the actual story by the end of the second act. I will give it credit for this: it doesn't feel allegorical until we get to the rising action. In fact, without giving too much away there's even a poetic correlation with not only the characters and the eponymous villain, but even a callback to the original story, by the end. Overall it's hard to really dislike this movie despite it clearly giving you little more than what you expect. It recalls other flicks, from The Thing, Night of The Lepus, Syfy channel's Minotaur, and 2016's The Monster (even though I've only seen the trailer for the latter) to even Annihilation and In a Violent Nature. The very prologue shows the director wanted to as much showcase how a villain can sometimes be disimilar to the ultimate antagonist as remind us of how its original story's tragedy serves as the first building block for a more serious reimagining.
Even if it may not be to everyone's liking, such as a horror movie.