Regardless of how you feel about this particular horror movie venture, it’s worth noting that Peter Pan’s dark history offers plenty of precedent for adult-targeted terror. Death, darkness, and allusions to various creepy mythological elements run rampant in the source material, and even Disney’s family-friendly version of “Peter Pan” has things only grown-ups notice. There’s even a disturbing theory that totally changes how the classic character’s story is viewed, framing Pan as the angel of death and Neverland as an afterlife realm.
When viewed in this context, it’s not all that shocking that the makers of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” have attached a Pan wagon to their slasher franchise train. While several redditors have criticized the way they expect “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare” to approach the subject, there are those who recognize the horror potential in J. M. Barrie’s story. “The whole thing with Peter Pan isn’t that he’s the good guy or the bad guy, but that he’s an innocent child, in a literal sense. He has no real understanding of right or wrong, instead only doing what he sees as fun,” u/JonGthewriter wrote. “And, given his demigod-like status, that’s terrifying.”
And after envisioning a movie project where Pan is an outright child abductor with a penchant for kicking overage Lost Boys off the team, redditor u/_meece_ succinctly summed things up: “Peter Pan is a creepy demon child anyway, might as well lean into it.”
