When you hear the word Bambi, you might think of something cute, cuddly, and animated. The classic film by a certain mouse company brings back fond memories for some and repressed trauma for others. Some viewers were triggered by the sight of Bambi crying over his dead mom. Remember, it’s a family picture, folks.

But someone has now decided to take things a little farther than the original film by stepping things to the next level. Director of Winner the Pooh: Blood and Honey is now working on a similarly horror-centric take on the classic Bambi with Bambi: The Reckoning. So with that in mind, here's what we would love to see in this bold take.

Animated Sequences

Disenchanted
Disney+

Fans of the recent Disenchanted might remember fondly how the original Enchanted opened with an animated sequence with a play on normal tropes only to pan out to the real-life story. This same kind of sequence would fit in wonderfully well with a horror-focused Bambi movie. It could open up on a wonderfully calm shot of the forest and pan over to a sweet mama deer getting shot by a hunter before Bambi decides to choose violence.

Related: Is Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey a Marker of the Next Hollywood Trend?

It writes itself. South Park had the template laid out years prior with the woodland critter Christmas episode. There's something magical about doing such horrific deeds but in cutesy animation that screams memorable. Putting even just a snippet of the film in animated form helps break up the rest of what may be a live-action movie.

A Tie-in With Blood and Honey

Winnie the Pooh horror movie Blood and Honey
Altitude Film Distribution

As we have seen in Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator, horror movies have been trying to pair up characters since 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. With Bambi: The Reckoning, there exists some good potential for this being an interesting match-up.

Even more than this movie, though, the same director has also teased a Peter Pan horror treatment as well. So there exists the possibility of a real three-way battle between all characters involved. A regular Mickey Mouse smackdown in the clubhouse would be quite a welcome surprise. Something that takes all the characters we have grown up with, only to twist them horribly. Stories like Peter Pan already have darker origins than their animated films might suggest, with a theory suggesting Peter killed off the Lost Boys. The trailer showcased Winnie the Pooh reimagined as a slasher, so it might be interesting to see what angle they invent for Bambi and his forest friends here.

Exciting Kills

angry-bambi-1
Walt Disney/Netflix

People certainly don't keep coming back to the Friday the 13th movies because of their great writing. The level of creativity filmmakers have with their kills ends up putting people in seats at the end of the day. That’s the real star of the show in a slasher movie. Terrifier 2 is a film that some consider excessive and features a real story with defined characters. The main draw has been the fact that scenes from it have been so violent and realistic that it's caused moviegoers to be ill. And yet this only increased the box office draw.

Related: Shudder's Skinamarink and Analog Horror: The Explosion of a Niche Subgenre

To theorize on Bambi: The Reckoning, though, there’s a lot that they might have to work with in this movie. The obvious go-to would be someone getting gored with a pair of antlers, but what about a Bambi who causes avalanches of tree limbs? Or Bambi could knock a tree down on someone by ramming it head-on. The filmmakers could set the movie up like The Blair Witch Project, with campers in the woods getting lost as a maniacal red-eyed deer stalks them from the misty hills shrieking well into the night. Knocking someone over into a herd of porcupines might also be an option here.

Tag team kills could also work, with Flower the skunk and Thumper the rabbit playing a role in the massacre. They could easily incorporate them here, with Flower blinding someone before the antlers swing.

We can also hope that Bambi has a great look along with his killer attitude. A ravenous and rabid Bambi with bloodied shark teeth is a sight that many would pay to witness. The director has already commented that the design may draw some inspiration from Netflix's The Ritual, but there's still room for other ideas. The deer mounted on the wall in Evil Dead II might be a perfect template. A creature that looks maniacal, scary, and yet weirdly funny at the same time. In fact, Evil Dead II is a pretty good template in general as well, given it has one foot in both horror and self-aware comedy.

Whatever the case, there's a lot of potential for a memorable movie and a rather dark universe dedicated to ruining (or improving) your childhood memories.