The Mean One Review: The Grinch Stole The Fun From This Horror Flick
© Courtesy of ColliderThe Mean One is a retelling of the Dr. Seuss horror film How the Grinch Stole Christmas , told from the point of view of Cindy Lou Who as an adult. Sounds like a silly, shaky, broken fairy tale, doesn't it? The film begins with a story that rhymes faithfully with the original and features a beautiful girl with pigtails... who witnesses traumatic horror amidst the flickering glow of Christmas lights. Sounds like the perfect opening for a silly horror movie, right? Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Wicked picks up where the Grinch left off, with Cindy befriending Wicked... except her mother comes downstairs and freaks out when she sees her daughter with the monster. Mother attacks the Evil One, the Evil One takes revenge and kills her.
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Twenty years later, Cindy ( Crystal Martin ) returns to Newville with her father to sell the old family home and hopefully get over the trauma of seeing her mother murdered. Dad is especially disappointed when they arrive in town and find that Newville has not only lost its Christmas spirit; Looks like they banned it. No one decorates, no one celebrates, you can't even buy Christmas presents in stores. Dad refuses to accept this and gets all the wreaths he can to decorate the house and bring some Christmas cheer into his daughter's life. Of course, the holiday spirit also introduces Evil ( David Howard Thornton ), who sees the decorations and kills Dad while Cindy takes out the trash. She is convinced that the Christmas killer is back to finish the job.
While cleaning up her father's blood, Cindy discovers a strange flower. He follows it along a certain route; or rather, a cave on this hiking trail. In this cave he finds the wallets of the missing tourists, and with the help of a nice young deputy (who the film takes pains to show is Jewish), he begins an investigation. After meeting a strange drunken man who looks suspiciously like Santa and tells Cindy about the mischief, Cindy begins training, determined to face her own demons.
Personally, I like the idea of destroying childhood stories with tales of bloodthirsty killers and other plot devices that are clearly not PG-rated. Unfortunately... that's not all. It was fun, in the different ways they tried to get away with using the Grinch's name, and in the other ways they obviously tried to get away with the Dr. Seuss story so they wouldn't be sued for copyright infringement. But one very important thing was missing for the success of such a film.
What "Wicked " lacked was a sense of humor. This kind of parodic horror film should understand that it is not meant to be serious. You have to understand and accept that you have to be ridiculous, over the top and stupid. For example, there are a number of scenes that looked like they were taken straight out of a Lifetime or Hallmark Channel Christmas movie, but felt like they were trying too hard to be authentic. I wanted something cute, tacky, over the top, and ridiculous.
While the crime scenes were good (especially the restaurant massacre), they weren't pretty. There was a lot of blood splatter, but it was all digital blood, which is frankly lazy these days. Bring us more carnage and true and false blood. There was a general lack of acting in this film. Everyone felt that he took his role very seriously.
The one exception was "The Evil One", incidentally performed by the Art Clown himself, David Howard Thornton. He knows how to play a non-verbal psychopathic killer who can evoke emotion through makeup. He seemed to be enjoying himself; he seemed to have fun with the role. And how could I not? The Mean One's costumes and makeup were quite attractive and strikingly similar to Jim Carrey 's appearance in the official movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas 2000.
I really wanted to like The Mean One . But aside from The Evil One itself, there were too many things I didn't like about this movie.
Classification : C-
