Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, reviewed by Matt Donato
Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare takes itself more seriously than its predecessors in Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s Twisted Childhood Universe, which is a problem. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 star turned Neverland Nightmare director Scott Jeffrey strives to accentuate his main character’s arrested adolescence by turning the boy who never grew up into a serial killer and kidnapper – keeping him more grounded than the typical pirates-and-fairies image of Peter Pan. As Wendy Darling squares off against this throat-slashing, brother-snatching version of Peter, Jeffrey skips the imaginative sparkle of the stories that inspired his film. Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare might be bleak and gory, but more notably, it’s a dull adaptation of Peter Pan’s adventures that makes him no different than a thousand other van-driving murderers who’ve come and gone before.
