It happens every year.
I start planning for it as the holiday season begins. Early Christmas morning, long before most people awake except for the excited kiddoes eagerly anticipating their gifts, I ready myself in front of my television screen and sit down with a Christmas-themed horror film.
Borne out of my own life traumas and a rathe deep distaste for the holiday season, I learned early in my adult years that having a place to put the darkness gave me permission to experience moments of lights amidst my usual darkness in what mean refer to as the season of joy.
Friends anticipate my selection each year. More often than not, it's a disappointing flick as pulling off effective horror centered around the holiday season proves to be more difficult than one might think. Oh sure, there are classics galore. There are also a lot of disappointments along the way.
I was expecting disappointment with this year's selection, Steven LaMorte's The Mean One, not only a Christmas-themed horror but also one of a recent flood of horror flicks to find their source material in treasured childhood classics ranging from Charlie Brown to Winnie the Pooh to, yes, Dr. Seuss.
Yet, something happened on the way to my expected disappointment.
I began enjoying myself. I began resonating with themes of unresolved trauma. Truthfully, I found David Howard Thornton's Grinch to be a gas and I found myself drawn to Krystle Martin's Cindy You-Know-Who as she returns to the Newville of her traumatic past.
The Mean One isn't a horror classic. Don't get me wrong. I can understand its current 23% on Rotten Tomatoes (at least until I add my review). I can understand why people would be offended by the idea of The Mean One. I can even understand why people wouldn't like it. However, Thornton, who has created the iconic contemporary horror character Art the Clown for the Terrifier films, is campy and glorious and occasionally downright terrifying here and I'd watch the film again just for his performance alone. A scene involving a swishy slaughter of a van-full of swinging Santas is worth the price of rental in itself. There's a hint of sentimentality here buried beneath buckets of blood courtesy of co-writers Finn and Flip Kobler, the latter having also penned a handful of Disney streamers like The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride and Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas among others.
After all, by now we all know that Grimm's Fairy Tales are truly grim. There's a place in the cinematic world for a truly mean Grinch.
The Mean One starts off slowly and never really starts to take off until the aforementioned Santa convention comes to town. This is where the camp really begins, though I did find myself surprisingly warm and fuzzy about Krystle Martin's early scenes as she arrives into town alongside her father and meets cute with the town's newcomer detective (Chase Mullins). The first slaughter scene lets us know that LaMorte is in on the joke. We're in for a campy, gory, silly, and gloriously "so bad it's good" time.
Thornton is the film's highlight for sure. Sadly, he's not here nearly as much as one might hope. When he's here, the screen lights in glorious red and green. Mostly red.
I'm not sure that The Mean One actually justifies taking our childhood memories and reminding us just how terrifying they really are, however, it's a far more satisfying motion picture than I expected and definitely leans toward the more positive end of the spectrum for my cinematic experiences on Christmas morning. The acting? Hit-and-miss at best with both Thornton and Martin shining amidst an otherwise blizzard of mediocrity.
If you're like me and struggle with dark streaks through your holiday experience, a film like The Mean One is a tapestry of tinsel strewn delight with just enough meaning to matter, a few impressive kills and chills and thrills, and a reminder that “One man’s toxic sludge is another man’s potpourri.”
Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic
