“Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare” is a Promising Slasher that Fails to Take Flight
Let’s be honest. Peter Pan has always been a little bit creepy. J. M. Barrie’s original story follows a series of child abductions with the title character serving as a thinly disguised metaphor for the angel of death. No matter how charming the original Disney film and subsequent musical adaptations, there’s no getting away from the predatory practices of the green-clad marauder.
Once this classic story hit public domain, it was only a matter of time before some horror creator sunk their teeth into the unsettling story, bringing out the more horrific elements with a straightforward genre retelling. Scott Chambers is that creator. After Doctor Jekyll and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, his latest film Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare explores the terror of a traveling man who steals little boys away from their parents while avoiding a sinister pirate with a hook for a hand. While the concept is indeed promising and the kills are sufficiently bloody, messy storytelling and thin lore keep this blood-soaked fairy tale from ever taking flight.
The story opens as a young boy encounters a grimy magician at a ramshackle fair. Charmed by a seemingly benign magic trick, the boy is terrorized by the stringy-haired performer who emerges from the boy’s cellar later that night. Introducing himself as Peter Pan (Martin Portlock), the terrifying man snatches the frightened boy away after brutally killing his mother. Sometime later, Michael Darling (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) is targeted by this same sketchy villain who begins rampaging through the town killing anyone who gets in his way. Trapped in Peter’s dilapidated home, Michael must wait for the frightening man to send him to Neverland. His only hope is an empathetic “fairy” called Tinkerbell (Kit Green) and his older sister Wendy (Megan Placito) who’s frustrated by an immature boyfriend of her own.
On its face, the film is a Rob Zombie-style slasher with a violent masked villain. Peter may see himself as a fun-loving child, but he is an older man with extensive scarring who injects himself with a heroin-like drug he calls pixie dust and seems to have last taken a shower sometime in the 20th century. Like an unsettling cross between Ethan Hawke’s The Grabber and David Howard Thornton’s Art the Clown, Peter lurks on the outskirts of civilization gruesomely killing adults and children alike. No one is safe as this monstrous man tools around in a jolly van, trolling for little boys to abduct.
Though each scene of violence is creative and sufficiently horrific, we’re missing a motive behind the madness. We’re never sure exactly why he’s driven to abduct and murder innocent boys and we also don’t learn much about what “Neverland” truly is. Whether a bizarre and violent ritual or simply a euphemism for death, the phrase hangs in the air like an ill-formed threat. The obvious answer is that Peter’s just a pedophile kidnapping, abusing, then murdering boys and it’s not unusual for a predator to dress up his egregious crimes with some lofty goal. But Chambers can’t seem to decide between fantastical lore and grim reality and we wind up with a vague killer and messy motivations.
Similarly perplexing is Peter’s backstory. We’re told that this notorious killer has reemerged after a period of absence and flashbacks combined with the opening sequence hint at a more public persona, but we never get a clear explanation of this past. Instead Chambers relies on IP and traditional lore to carry the audience through some more confusing bits, leaning into violence along the way. Elements of Barrie’s original story filter through the convoluted plot and Chambers expects us to fill in the details for ourselves.
While it’s not unusual for a low-budget slasher to skimp on plot, here it feels particularly galling. Chambers dips into uncomfortable territory that he’s either unequipped or unwilling to parse out. In addition to uncomfortable parallels to allegations against Michael Jackson, Tinkerbell is characterized as a trans woman who’s prolonged torture has led her to believe she has fairy powers. While perhaps well-intentioned, this plotline is so poorly fleshed out that it feels vaguely offensive. Little more than an object of horror, Tinkerbell never becomes a fully realized character on her own. Chambers introduces this and other deeper threads, then abandons them in favor of another grisly kill.
The world of horror is littered with exploited IP and low budget films thrown together to capitalize on a particular moment. But every once in a while what appears to be a naked cash grab becomes a diamond in the rough. Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare has the makings of the latter with the hints of a deeply empathetic and powerful story. But Chambers fails to water these seeds and we’re left with a standard slasher that hints at greatness. Hopefully the next filmmaker to tackle this larger-than-life story will take the time to do it justice.