O Malvado - Horror no Natal

"The Mean One" is a lackluster parody of Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" with a higher body count. Despite the presence of David Howard Thornton, known for his role as Art the Clown in "Terrifier 2," the movie fails to deliver on its central joke. The use of shaky camera scenes and dark lighting hides Thornton, and the movie's commitment to CGI blood splatters zaps the basic thrills of its scenes. The supporting characters are walking tropes, and the movie's emotional investment in Cindy You-know-Who is weak. Overall, the movie is a missed opportunity for a fun, bloody riff on a classic story.

The Mean One (2022) is a movie that I caught in theatres this evening (Regal Theatres picked it up). The storyline focuses on a town where eleven years ago a gruesome murder occurred leaving an entire household dead and one survivor, Cindy. As Cindy is finally learning to live with the nightmares from that night, similar occurrences start happening again around the town. Has the killer returned?

This movie is directed by Steven LaMorte (Nightwatch series) and stars David Howard Thornton (The Terrifier 1 & 2), Krystle Martin (They Live in the Grey), Chase Mullins (Driven), Amy Schumacher (Nightwatch series), John Bigham (Angel's Dance) and Erik Baker (One Stop Away).

The narration is good, has some nice comedy and reminded me of Malcolm McDowell. The storyline isn't good and neither is the acting outside of David Howard Thornton. The Grinch was fun for the most part. The writing for The Grinch's backstory wasn't good but the mannerisms and facial expressions were solid. His movements were cool too. The kills were okay, there was some solid gore and a plethora of nail and neck kills. I will warn viewers there's some bad CGI fire and blood splatter. The ending is absolutely atrocious. I didn't like the ending at all...but it fit.

Overall, this is bad, but an absolute must watch for those who enjoy bad horror films. I would score this a 3.5-4/10 and strongly recommend it.

Jim Carrey's Grinch meets Terrifier's Art w/o a budget.... this movie on paper had so much potential and had a studio backed it financially, maybe it would have had a chance! Hardly any on-screen kills worthwhile and that's probably because the budget wasn't there for impressive special effects. No money also means no actors. And above all else, there's no licensing deal on the character or all that comes with it. It just feels like a High School film project. I love Art the Clown and the Terrifier movies are terrific gorefest slasher flicks. The Mean One falls flat on almost every level. The coolest thing is the design of The Grin... "The Mean One." Even that isn't original as it's a blatant ripoff of Jim Carrey's classic interpretation.

So, this movie is a trip to say the least. Lots of cheap blood effects, many deaths, awkward acting, and some weird comedy mixed in with the horror aspect. The makeup is actually pretty good for such a small studio. The character of The Mean One is actually pretty good, and they don't add too much backstory, unlike some of the previous adaptations of the story. It's just "stealing lives, just like their Christmas" and not much more. This movie definitely doesn't fail at being entertaining for it's runtime (93 minutes). It might be pretty cheesy and poorly acted, but it is for sure a wild ride. Is it funny? Not really. Has it ruined my childhood? Probably. Despite all the negatives I've mentioned, it's actually fun to watch and I do recommend it to fans of the original story.

When I first read online that they were making a Christmas Horror Movie based on Dr. Suess' timeless classic "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", It really flipped my mind and was like "seriously?!", one thing's for sure is that ever since the failure of the live-action movie adaptation of "the Cat in the Hat"; Audrey Giesel told every movie executive not to adapt any of his classic stories into live-action films and almost 2 decades later, they never listen! The story is just bland and awkward and so are the characters that are literally just stereotypical characters even this movie has a lot of awkward acting, and cheap blood effects and the makeup design of the Mean One looks just plain cheesy and awkward at the same time. Whatever you do fans of this Dr. Suess story, do not see this since he and his wife are rolling in their graves by now and stick with the Original story as well as the Animated Special animated by the legendary Chuck Jones and even the 2000 film version starring Jim Carrey as the Title Character, plus the 2018 animated movie made by the studio that brought us Despicable Me films; it's okay and decent enough for anyone who enjoyed one of Dr. Suess' best-beloved stories both young and old.