My Review of Bambi: The Reckoning (2025)

 

Written by Rhys Warrington

Directed by Dan Allen

Michael: "You ever shot a deer?"

Tyler: "No. Have you?"

Michael: "Yeah, once."

I had actually forgotten about the Twisted Childhood Universe until I was scrolling and saw this movie. I already ventured into the gnarly takes on Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan, what not an orphaned deer on a murderous rampage?

The movie started as you'd expect with Bambi losing his mother as expected. He's mostly alone until he mated with Faline and they had a fawn together. Then Faline got hit by a toxic waste truck and died and being whacked with a spade brought out Bambi's feral side.

Let's just say this deer isn't happy with a herbivore diet plan. In fact most of the characters in this film (not that they're particularly fleshed out) learned the hard way that Bambi had a lethal streak to him as well as a taste for human flesh.

Speaking of humans and because we needed a few as protagonists - there was mother and son duo, Xana (Roxanne McKee) and Benji (Tom Mulheron). They're likable enough as characters and just wanted to see Simon's (Alex Cooke) family, mostly his dementia suffering mother, Mary (Nicola Wright). It seemed like she knew more about Bambi than she was letting on.

The rest of the family included the likes of Andrew (Russell Geoffrey Banks), Harriet (Samira Mighty) and Harrison (Joseph Greenwood). The latter in particular was a dick to both Mary and Benji for no reason at all. Throw in some other horrible characters like Tyler (Big Tobz) and Eddie (Ewan Borthwick) and perhaps Bambi had a point after all.

Remember the fawn I mentioned earlier in the review? They're important because they were being mistreated by Tyler and Eddie and then that fawn was made an orphan by Michael (Adrian Relph). History repeated itself in quite a horrid way.

- Michael killed Bambi's mother and then Bambi. Mary killed Michael. Mary was the best human in this film. Mary also did the opening narration.

- Benji was convinced his parents were getting deported. I'm sure he meant divorced.

- There was some feral rabbits in this film but no characters from the previous three films.

- Chronology: Set during the course of a night. There are no day scenes in this movie whatsoever.

I found Bambi: The Reckoning to be okay enough. It's not particularly good or even bad. The acting's fine, the story moved at a fast enough pace but a lot of the scenes were hard to actually see because it was so poorly lit. The ending was top notch though. Best part of the film.

Rating: 6 out of 10