Fairytales are often much darker than the versions that many people first heard as children. The works of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault, among others, were originally more skewed towards adults or designed to warn kids of the dangers of the world through much more frightening means. Red Riding Hood, for instance, ended with the titular young girl being devoured by the Big Bad Wolf, while Hansel and Gretel‘s notoriously grisly conclusion sees the kids escape after pushing the witch who intended to eat them into her own oven. Disney played a big role in sanitizing a lot of these tales and bringing them to wider audiences with Golden Age classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, among others.
Yet, the Mouse House’s adaptation of Carlo Collodi‘s 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio still manages to keep some of its original darkness and remains among its most frightening films. 1940’s Pinocchio follows the innocent boy out into the world, where he finds trouble around every corner, from the abusive puppeteer Stromboli to the fearsome Coachman, who sells disobedient boys into slave labor after they’re transformed into donkeys on Pleasure Island. It’s meant as a classic, if questionable, morality tale about the consequences of misbehaving and the dangers of the world, and remains among Disney’s most beloved updates despite its penchant to scare. However, another loose fairytale film is about to take the horror of the wooden boy to new heights as part of the Twisted Childhood Universe.
Pinocchio Unstrung is set to premiere next week on July 24, and it reimagines the charming marionette as a jagged wooden killer twisted by the outside world. Written and directed by Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey helmer Rhys Frake-Waterfield, the film revolves around an elite London prep school and a boy named James, the grandson of Geppetto. One day, the woodcarver introduces James to his titular magical creation, sparking a friendship between the kid and Pinocchio that quickly turns sinister. James introduces his living puppet pal to everything outside his home, but between his naïveté and the influence of a wicked Cricket, he’s pushed into a violent rampage in hopes of carving himself into a real boy like his “brother.”
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
‘Pinocchio Unstrung’ Welcomes Two Horror Veterans to the TCU
Pinocchio himself is undoubtedly the star of the latest public domain TCU flick, being a fully practical creation for the occasion. Frake-Waterfield enlisted Emmy-winning makeup and special effects artist Todd Masters, who has credits in Dune: Part Two, Child’s Play 2019, and Slither, among other things, to help the puppet feel truly alive with a hand-crafted aesthetic. As for the stars around the marionette, Pinocchio Unstrungcounts two horror veterans among its ranks in A Nightmare on Elm Street star Robert Englund as the demented cricket and Richard Brake, who has appeared in Doom, Barbarian, and Mandy, among others, as Geppetto. They’re joined by Cameron Bell as James and Jack Art Gray as the voice of the titular puppet.
Pinocchio Unstrung arrives on July 24. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the hottest upcoming titles across streaming, television, and theaters throughout the rest of the year.
