By Eric Ortiz (@EricOrtizG)
In The Mean One (2022) the classic story of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, written by Dr. Seuss and published in 1957, is modified and taken to the realm of horror with a comedic touch. Something similar happened recently with other iconic characters in children’s literature, when Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) turned Pooh and his friend Piglet into ruthless killers. However, the main difference is that How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is not yet in the public domain.
In an interview for the Fantastic Pavilion, The Mean One director Steven LaMorte explained that they managed to get away with it because “the movie is, of course, a parody, so we’re protected by fair use. We were not trying to ruin the source material or confuse people into thinking that we are an official production. Yes, it has the references to the original story, but our movie is its own thing. We had fun with it and we just want to make some people laugh and smile around a holiday horror film.”
The Mean One presents an alternate version of the Christmas Eve encounter between the green creature and Cindy-Lou Who. In the book, she wakes up and finds the Grinch disguised as Santa Claus during the execution of his master plan: steal all the Christmas-related stuff from every house in Who-ville, the town near his cave, to prevent the inhabitants from enjoying again, with a feast of food, presents and singing, the holiday that he hates so much. The Grinch manages to trick the little girl, who goes back to bed.
In LaMorte’s film, Cindy makes a gesture of kindness towards the creature but her mother bursts into the scene and although all she wants is to defend her daughter, everything ends in tragedy with the mother dead. This also causes the origin of the so-called Mean One, essentially the version of the Grinch who murders anyone who tries to celebrate Christmas.
LaMorte likes to “take characters, ideas or concepts that we know and give them a horror comedy twist. So making The Mean One just seemed like ‘how come no one’s done this before?’ The character that the Mean One is based on is a giant green monster, who’s angry and looks like Bigfoot. That sounds like a movie monster to me, who should be out there attacking people and hating Christmas.”
The main plot of The Mean One takes place 20 years after the traumatic event, when an adult Cindy (Krystle Martin) decides to return to her town, Newville, accompanied by her father (Flip Kobler). This is a recommendation from her therapist in order to find closure. LaMorte revealed that his “initial idea was to make Cindy a child and go a little more Home Alone (1990) with the end of the film, where you have a young Cindy who’s got to get the armor and the weapons, and she has to booby trap the house to fight this monster.”
However, the director ended up choosing a path more linked to psychological horror: “The more we looked at what that production would be like, we were just doing Home Alone. It didn’t make any sense to go that route. What makes her character so strong is that Cindy has that vulnerability. People don’t believe that her mother was killed by this monster. She has these nightmares, she’s being tormented by the past, everyone is telling her she’s crazy. And then once she realizes that she’s not crazy and the monster is real, she’s able to decide ‘I’m going to take matters into my own hands and I’m going to get revenge’.”
LaMorte’s movie certainly works as a slasher as well, with the Mean One brutally murdering more people, whether using a big candy cane, his own claws, a meat grinder, or a knife. The man who plays the monster is David Howard Thornton himself, who recently earned his place among horror icons after bringing to life the brutal Art the Clown in Terrifier (2016) and the much more popular sequel Terrifier 2 (2022). LaMorte said that “in our slasher the monster is not just in the shadows, with no personality. David gives a great performance and he’s got a huge personality. Once he’s in the makeup and he’s wearing the whole outfit, the whole thing just comes to life. David brings it to another level.”
Although the word Grinch is never mentioned, The Mean One has fun with constant nods to the source material: from a rhyming narrator, a character named Doc Zeuss (John Bigham), to referencing that heart that grows three sizes. It also has its own mythology and involves other characters: a young police officer (Chase Mullins) – who serves as Cindy’s romantic interest –, the mayor (Amy Schumacher) and the sheriff (Erik Baker) of Newville. For LaMorte, “the concept is not enough, you have to have a good story. It was important that the logic of the story made sense, if people have seen this creature or if there have been murders in the past, why they wouldn’t be talking about it? So we had to build into the story this logic of why this town, Newville, mysteriously doesn’t have Christmas. What sort of conspiracy is lurking in the shadows of this seemingly small and innocent town?”
The Mean One always leads to that final confrontation between Cindy and the green creature. According to LaMorte, “something that is really cool is the final girl idea in a horror flick. But most of the time, when you have your last standing female, she has to make kind of a desperate fight, she’s maybe injured, she’s not prepared. So I thought, what if your final girl was Sarah Connor? Krystle has a lot of stunt experience, she stunt doubles for Ronda Rousey, she knows guns, swords, she does big fire burns. If we have a Cindy who can do all this, why not have her go toe-to-toe with the monster? Once I saw the first Halloween (2018) of David Gordon Green’s new trilogy, where you have Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and now she’s got a gun and she sets traps, I was like ‘perfect, it works, let’s do that.’ But let’s make Cindy’s outfit a little cool so we gave her the bullet proof vest, the exploding Christmas ornament grenades, and the shotgun.”
When asking LaMorte about the response that his peculiar version of the Grinch has had, the director stated that “we can’t speak to anyone involved with the source material. But we’ve had such an awesome and fun reaction from people who are fans of Terrifier and want to see David in a new character. Then there’s people who are fans of the source material and want to see my twisted, weird, funny, scary version. Then there’s people who are expecting a horror movie and actually find a really fun Christmas film, something that’s got real heart and humanity in addition to scares, thrills and jokes.”
The Mean One is now available on VOD, Blu-ray and DVD.