Here Comes The ‘Grinch’ Slasher Movie, For Some Reason

Good news for fans of graphic murders and rhyming couplets; there’s a new movie coming out that seemingly combines the magic of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas with the bloody kills of a low-budget slasher movie. This bizarre project comes in addition to the upcoming Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, which similarly subverts legendary icons of children's literature in the service of terror, depicting the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood as gore-thirsty maniacs – which still looks like only the third or fourth-scariest Winnie-the-Pooh story, to be honest.

The plot of the Grinch-y film, tited The Mean One, involves the titular green Christmas-hating creature stealing the holiday, which in this take includes actually murdering people. Since presumably no amount of festive songs or roast beast-carving could fix that transgression, the Grinch-esque character remains a villain, only to be hunted by one of his young victims: “Cindy.”

Unlike Winnie-the-Pooh, the Grinch character isn’t in the public domain (although he was originally supposed to enter the public domain way back in 2014) hence why this movie needs to tip-toe around any specific details mentioned in the original story (for all we know, it’s set in What-Town during Hanukkah).

It’s tempting to see the release of The Mean One, coming so soon after Blood and Honey, as part of a brand new trend in which childhood characters are repurposed for horror movies – but this kind of thing happens all the time, just with stories we don’t necessarily think of as being copyrighted. There are already horror versions of Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, and Pinocchio – the latter being slightly less upsetting than the recent Disney+ live-action nightmare. 

And it goes the other way too; after all, isn’t Toy Story just a family-friendly take on Child’s Play? The Mean One is set to stream for free in December, presumably because the filmmakers experienced some kind of mysterious heart enlargement. 

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Thumbnail: Universal Pictures