Pinocchio: Unstrung (2026)

Pinocchio Unstrung is a 2026 British independent slasher film written and directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield. It is the fifth installment in the Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU) and serves as a horror retelling of Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio. The film stars Richard Brake, Robert Englund, Cameron Bell, and Jessica Balmer, with Jude-Evan Lloyd as the voice of the title character. It follows Geppetto's grandson James, who develops a friendship with Pinocchio until his naïve nature results in the puppet going on a crusade to eliminate all things bad.

First announced in January 2024 as a Pinocchio-based horror film, the film was subsequently revealed to be set in the TCU shared continuity. The cast was announced between November 2024 and October 2025, with Peter DeSouza-Feighoney and Scott Chambers reprising their roles from Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 as Michael Darling and Christopher Robin, respectively.

Pinocchio Unstrung premiered at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival on 11 April 2026, before it was theatrically released worldwide on 24 July 2026, by ITN Distribution. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.

Plot

Fourteen-year-old James is sent to live with his grandfather Geppetto after his parents perish in a car accident. He makes friends with two other children, Zach and Michael, but Zach dies from terminal cancer and Michael is forced to move due to his mother Mary's new job as a hypnotherapist at the nearby town of Ashdown. Geppetto promises to build a friend who will never abandon his grandson again.

One year later, James and his classmates Mia and Dudley are constantly bullied by high school students Trey and Logan. That night, James is awakened by strange noises and enters the basement where Geppetto works. He introduces James to Pinocchio, a sentient wooden puppet whose nose grows every time he lies. Geppetto explains he built Pinocchio to be James' new friend.

As James and Pinocchio bond to a brother-like friendship, the latter learns about human anatomy and wishes to become a real boy. While James is at school, Pinocchio enters the basement and finds a disfigured wooden creature who introduces herself as Pinocchio's "Wood Mother". She reminds Pinocchio that he is just a puppet and will need human organs to become real. The next day, James takes Pinocchio to school; he explores the gym, but accidentally causes a chain reaction that kills James' teacher with a treadmill. Later, James introduces Pinocchio to Mia and Dudley.

While returning home in a taxi, a drunk driver crashes into them and James is hospitalised under the care of Dr. Christopher Robin. Remembering the Wood Mother's words and realising that perhaps he should eliminate the people who harm James, Pinocchio sneaks into the driver's hospital room, rips the skin off his face and disembowels him to put his organs into his wooden chest. James returns home and, along with Mia and Dudley, enters the basement and finds notes written by Geppetto about his "failed works". Meanwhile, Pinocchio tells his Wood Mother about the killings, who congratulates him. A talkative cricket with a humanoid body is introduced to Pinocchio to "keep [him] on the right path and obey the grown-ups," who encourages him to kill anybody who has put James in danger. Together, they murder James' school dentist to take out her teeth.

James, Mia, and Dudley watch tapes that reveal Geppetto created more wooden puppets before Pinocchio, whom he destroyed because he considered them imperfect to be James' friends. Upon learning about Pinocchio's killing spree, James, Mia, and Dudley attempt to warn Trey and Logan as they are his next targets. Pinocchio arrives at Logan's house and breaks his girlfriend Georgia's jaw with an axe in the pool. The Cricket then fatally electrocutes her while Pinocchio rips Logan's tongue and eyes. In Trey's house, Pinocchio kills his girlfriend Amanda, tears off her scalp to use it, and murders Trey by impaling his skull with his growing nose. Pinocchio later wears the skin of one of his victims, even creating a "puppet" of his own out of the various parts of his victims.

Geppetto takes Pinocchio back home, repressing him for the murders. Pinocchio learns his Wood Mother and the Cricket tricked him into doing bad things, so he kills them both with a sledgehammer. James, Mia, and Dudley arrive at the basement just as Geppetto is about to destroy Pinocchio. When Pinocchio asks how he came to life, Geppetto reveals to have used Zach's corpse to build him, transferring his soul into the puppet. As James rescues Pinocchio, Geppetto shoots Dudley dead and knocks James unconscious before pursuing Mia to kill her while revealing to be an apprentice of the late Dr. Arthur Gallup, continuing with his experiments to resurrect dead children. James stabs Geppetto before Pinocchio holds him at gunpoint.

Pinocchio shoots at Geppetto but misses and hits a panel that releases an aggressive wooden creature, who kills Geppetto as the entire house begins to burn. James, Mia, and Pinocchio manage to escape and promise to forget what happened. When Pinocchio reveals that he did not enjoy killing people, his nose begins to grow again. In a post-credits scene, the Cricket is revealed to have survived and recovers Geppetto's corpse to resurrect him.

Cast

Richard Brake as Geppetto

Robert Englund as the voice of the Talking Cricket

Cameron Bell as James

Jessica Balmer as Mia

Jude-Evan Lloyd as the voice of Pinocchio

He, built by Todd Masters and MastersFX, was also physically operated on set by Lewis Santer and Martin Portlock

Emma Tate as the voice of the Wood Mother

Jack Art Gray as Dudley

Toni Olabanji as Trey

Luca Marandola as Logan

Mya Brown as Georgia

Karolina Knight as Amanda

Elliott Spilling as Zach

Belinda Fenty as The Dentist

Kelly Rian Sanson as Miss Daniels

Tom Jackson as Roger

Jay Robertson as Drunk Driver

Amanda Jane York as Drunk Driver's Wife

Additionally, Scott Chambers reprises his role as Christopher Robin from Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 while Peter DeSouza-Feighoney reprises his role as Michael Darling from Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare.

Production

In January 2024, it was announced that a horror film centered around the titular character from The Adventures of Pinocchio was in development, while it was also revealed that additional characters from other childhood stories would be revealed as a part of the Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU). Officially titled Pinocchio Unstrung, the first promotional concept art was released, with the plot stated to be revealed at a later time. The film was written and directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield. Because he served as director, Frake-Waterfield chose to give creative control to Scott Chambers on Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 (after directing the first two Blood and Honey films) to focus entirely on Pinocchio Unstrung and avoid "stretching [himself] too thin." Frake-Waterfield revealed the film would be an "extremely unique and R-rated depiction of Pinocchio," featuring a "high kill count, a subversion of the original story, and lots of practical gore." The film would feature a scene where Pinocchio wears the skin of his victims to "feel like a real boy." Chambers in early 2025 expressed in an interview with MovieWeb that Pinocchio would serve as the film's lead character and that compared to the other films in the TCU, Pinocchio: Unstrung would "destroy childhoods." The director revealed that there were two options for a direction to take the IP in; a "creepy doll like Annabelle" or more of a "campy, crafty and fun route." Frake-Waterfield chose the latter as it fit his directing style. The film was influenced by Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio for relying entirely on practical effects (stop-motion), which he believed gave the film a "kooky, crafty feel," especially as the original source material features "things being handcrafted". In March 2026, the film was described by Frake-Waterfield as a "twisted coming-of-age story told from the puppet's perspective: a creation struggling for autonomy while being manipulated by the sinister forces around him, from Robert Englund's sinister Talking Cricket to Richard Brake's obsessive Geppetto."

In November 2024, Robert Englund was cast in a lead role, later revealed to be the Talking Cricket, while Richard Brake was cast as Geppetto. One of Englund's acting roles during his childhood years at a children's theatre program Teenage Drama Workshop was in fact the titular character Pinocchio; Englund saw an opportunity to close the decade-long loop by portraying the voice of the Cricket. Englund wanted to avoid portraying the Cricket's laugh too closely to his iconic role Freddy Krueger, choosing to instead make it "a little higher, a little more hysterical, as if you could see little bit into Cricket's psychosis." Brake was aware of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and its negative reception when offered the role of Geppetto, and considered turning it down until he read the script and ended up loving it. Brake enjoyed having to play a character that "wasn't just some unhinged guy" and showed a "particular grandfatherly side," being a father of three boys himself; "It was really fun to be able to do that and to really pull it off, because you need to think he's a lovely guy before you see who he really is." Cameron Bell, Jessica Balmer, Jack Art Gray and Peter DeSouza-Feighoney also star. In October 2025, Jude-Evan Lloyd was cast as the voice of Pinocchio. Emma Tate was added to the cast under the name "Carving," which was eventually revealed to be the Wood Mother. DeSouza-Feighoney reprised his role from Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare as Michael Darling, while Chambers reprised his role from Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 as Christopher Robin.

Principal photography took place by November 2024. Filming was originally set to commence in September 2024 and October 2024. The character of Pinocchio was a fully practical animatronic because Frake-Waterfield really wanted him to feel real. Todd Masters at MastersFX handled the puppetry for the film after his work on the Child's Play reboot (2019). Regarding Pinocchio's design, the filmmakers wanted it to have a balance between being cute and creepy, deciding that at times Pinocchio would feel strange but innocent, yet other times would become more sinister when his nose grows longer. Two identical-looking puppets were created which they occasionally called "A" and "B" or "One" and "Two" from time to time before they came up with official names; "Lighty" (which ironically enough was quite heavy despite its name) which was used for scenes such as the pool scene and "Stunty", a non-animatronic with an inanimate head and spots for rods to move its body, which Masters expressed was "the most abused puppet" because of how often it was used during filming, such as throwing it down the stairs. Lewis Santer and Martin Portlock (who portrayed Tigger and Peter Pan in the TCU, respectively), were involved as puppeteers; Portlock often performed the dialouge for Pinocchio, operating a joystick system that controlled his facial movements. Right before the crew flew out to London to begin filming, they realised Geppetto needed puppets for his workshop table in the background. Quickly, they took a few prototype models and painted them to have them resemble Geppetto's failed projects. Two of these models were called "Shitty" and "Cruddy." Because of the film's low budget, a green bedsheet was used for green screens. The animated opening sequence (alongside the title card and end credits) was entirely practical; Frake-Waterfield, Chambers, cinematographer Vince Knight and his girlfriend Karolina Knight used cutout puppets with one of Chambers's towels as a backdrop, working in the front room on News Years Eve.

Music

Pinocchio Unstrung (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack album for the film. Andrew Scott Bell composed the film's score. The soundtrack was released by Dark House Music on 21 July 2026.

Release

Pinocchio Unstrung had its world premiere at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival on 11 April 2026. The film was theatrically released in North America on 24 July 2026, under Viva Pictures. Altitude Film Distribution also released the film on the same date in the United Kingdom. It was previously set to be released in 2025. The film had a worldwide theatrical release by ITN Distribution.

Reception

Box office

Pinocchio Unstrung grossed $625,726 in the United States and Canada, and $193,248 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $818,974.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of 25 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Pinocchio: Unstrung gleefully twists a children's classic into a gruesome, darkly hilarious horror romp, balancing brutal gore, campy absurdity, and impressive practical effects." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 50 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.

Notes

See also

Pinocchio's Revenge

References

External links

Pinocchio Unstrung at IMDb