There are two recent developments in indie horror that account for low-budget Christmas horror movie The Mean One getting a theatrical release on more screens than awards contenders like Aftersun and The Inspection. The first is the theatrical success of slasher sequel Terrifier 2, starring David Howard Thornton as the murderous Art the Clown. The second is the viral sensation caused by the trailer for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a horror take on the beloved children’s characters that has itself been bumped up to a theatrical release for this coming February.
The Mean One stars Thornton as its title character, who is an obvious stand-in for beloved children’s character the Grinch, created by Dr. Seuss. The Mean One joins recent productions Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, Gale: Stay Away From Oz, and Mad Heidi in the mini-trend of horror-movie reimaginings of childhood literature, although the difference is that at least some elements of Winnie-the-Pooh, The Wizard of Oz, and Heidi are in the public domain. Dr. Seuss’ 1957 book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is clearly still under copyright, so the filmmakers walk a fine line of winking at the audience about the source of their characters and story without explicitly identifying them.
The Mean One may be labeled a parody for legal reasons, but it’s almost never funny and barely even campy, instead delivering a disappointingly straightforward slasher story about a monster terrorizing a small town. The opening prologue rewrites the Grinch’s familiar story, so that his Christmas Eve encounter with young Cindy Lou Who (here redubbed Cindy You Know Who) ends in bloodshed instead of a heartwarming connection. Cindy’s mother discovers the Grinch in their house, and in the ensuing fight, she’s accidentally killed, setting the Grinch on a path of holiday homicide.
Twenty years later, adult Cindy (Krystle Martin) returns to her mountain hometown of Newville (not Whoville) along with her father (co-writer Flip Kobler) to sell the family home. When they arrive, they discover that Newville has erased all traces of Christmas. They’re pulled over by the friendly Officer Burke (Chase Mullins), who tells them that their car-window reindeer antler decorations are illegal. And when Cindy’s father wants to decorate the house for Christmas, he can’t find any Christmas paraphernalia sold in town. It’s not clear why he’s so cheerful about the holiday on which his wife was murdered by the so-called Christmas Killer, when Cindy has spent time in a psychiatric hospital to deal with her trauma.
There’s no time to explore that mystery, though, because pretty soon the Christmas Killer is back, dispensing with Cindy’s dad and putting her back in the position of insisting to the police that a furry green monster is responsible. The local sheriff (Erik Baker) is just as dismissive now as he was two decades earlier, and the overly perky mayor (Amy Schumacher) seems to have taken her cues from the mayor in Jaws and is mainly concerned about negative word-of-mouth harming the tourist interest in mountain climbing. Their skepticism doesn’t matter, though, as the Christmas Killer quickly racks up a body count.
The Mean One’s version of the Grinch never speaks, but Thornton brings some menacing physicality to the creature when he’s onscreen, and the demented variation on the character’s signature look is suitably horrific. Overall, though, The Mean One is less grotesque than the 2000 Jim Carrey-starring version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and the visuals aside from the monster itself) are drab and ugly, typical of rushed micro-budget horror productions. Narrator Chris Sanders does his best approximation of Boris Karloff from the 1966 animated TV special, but the rhyming narration has nothing on Dr. Seuss. There are no clever subversions of the Grinch story or the small-town holiday romance, as Cindy and Burke engage in a perfunctory courtship.
The Dr. Seuss references are tiresome and obvious (a diner “today’s special” sign for green eggs and ham, a grizzled hunter character named Dr. Zeuss), but director Steven LaMorte occasionally captures a sense of twisted fun, especially in a training montage set to a heavy metal version of “Carol of the Bells.” It’s amusing to watch Cindy pummeling a dummy of the Christmas Killer, twirling candy-cane nunchucks, and creating Christmas-ornament grenades, but those moments are brief, and LaMorte relies far more heavily on garish torrents of CGI blood.
The creative team behind The Mean One comes from a surprisingly family-friendly background: LaMorte’s debut feature is a faith-based Christmas movie, Kobler has writing credits on multiple direct-to-video Disney animated sequels, and Thornton performed in the national tour of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical. Yet there’s no sense of glee in deconstructing those wholesome traditions, or any commentary on their potential dark sides. There’s just a one-note joke premise that might have made for an entertaining three-minute viral video, extended into a forgettable horror movie whose main accomplishment is cashing in on a dubious trend. 
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“The Mean One” opens in select theaters Friday.
