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“ | All of us down in Newville like Christmas a lot. But... that thing that lives just North of Newville, does not. | „ |
~ Dr. Zeus, describing the Mean One. |
“ | GO! | „ |
~ The Mean One's only line in the film. |
The Mean One is the titular main antagonist of the 2022 Christmas-themed horror slasher film of the same name.
A more gruesome play on the original Grinch story, the Mean One is a bloodthirsty murderer who still has the same hatred for Christmas, this time murdering anybody who even shows signs of liking Christmas.
He is portrayed by David Howard Thornton, who also portrayed Art the Clown in Terrifier.
Appearance[]
His design looks very similar to Jim Carrey's version, however with different features. His skin and fur is a dark green, he has red eye pupils with black shadows, sharp claws and his santa costume is dirty with tears and patches.
In the final flashback, he seems to look like the original green Grinch but when called a monster by Cindy, his skin and fur color changes, most likely because of his heart becoming smaller.
Personality[]
The Mean One still retains the original personality of the original Grinch. However, he received a more gruesome makeover, as the Mean One, unlike the Grinch, has a homicidal taste for blood (mainly for people who like Christmas).
Biography[]
While everyone in the town of Newville liked Christmas, this thing doesn't and is called "the Mean One." Our story starts with him stealing Christmas from the You-Know-Who family where the daughter Cindy finds him and asks why but he just pats her on the head and waves her off. She responds by giving him her necklace. However, her mother comes down and sees them. Feeling worried for her daughter, she starts attacking him but he fights back and she ends up killed when she falls on a nail, impailing her neck. An angry Cindy calls the Mean One a "monster "and he responds by growling at her. However, he got away and Cindy gave a description of him in a drawing but Sheriff Hooper doesn't find it as a reliable description.
20 years later, the Mean One is still active and a now adult Cindy returns to the town with her dad but the town starts banning Christmas decorations in order to not attract him. However, Cindy experiences nightmares from that dreadful night and one night, she and her father are preparing for Christmas until she's locked out of the house and forced to watch as the Mean One murders her father.
The next day, she wakes up in a hospital and tries explaining what happened but Sheriff Hooper and Mayor McBean ignored her explanation and the latter seems to only care about her election than a Christmas killer. However, Officer Burke believes her and wants to help her.
On the snowy mountains, Cindy takes pictures of it but then finds a discarded wallet belonging to Walter Mulberry and later saves a hitchhiker from the Mean One but the hitchhiker is unable to describe the attacker due to blacking out. Cindy then puts up flyers but McBean tears them down. Burke decides to help Cindy by later searching up Walter Mulberry but finds out that the guy's missing.
At a bar, the Mean One then finds a group of Christmas travelers and traps the bartender in the freezer after killing a member of the group. He then locks the door to the bar and takes out a giant candy cane. At first, the group finds him entertaining but then gets scared when he kills one of them after he comes out of the bathroom. They try to escape but he manages to massacre them before destroying a gingerbread house. The bartender finally gets out but it is too late and is the only survivor. She is unable to describe the attacker due to being shock. Cindy still wants to help but Sheriff Hooper tells her to go home or come with him.
At Cindy's house, she watches the news about the bar massacre but then her power gets turned off. As she starts turning it on, the Mean One appears and tries to attack her but she is able to close the door in time to start hiding. When she hears him coming, she attacks but then finds out it's just a harmless old man named Dr. Zeus, who had scared off the attacker and then invites Cindy for a drink.
At the Horton's, Dr. Zeus reveals that he has to keep an eye on her and knew that when she came back into town, the Mean One would be back. He expresses sympathy towards her for the death of her parents and gives her an accurate description of the attacker. He introduces the killer as a bloodthirsty creature that hates Christmas and goes by a lot of names but mostly calls him the Mean One. He then explains that The Mean One's the reason why Newville can't celebrate Christmas and that his wife was killed by the Mean One 11 years ago. He also explains that the Mean One's heart is an empty hole. Cindy offers to have Dr. Zeus' statement be given to the sheriff.
At the sheriff department, they make the statement but Hooper brushes them off due to Dr. Zeus being an alcoholic and is reaching a limit with Cindy but Burke believes them. Cindy starts to get angry at him and Sheriff Hooper claims that he's protecting this town before angrily telling Cindy to leave. Burke sadly tells Cindy that they have no jurisdiction out there but he can head up to the mountain.
At the mountain, Officer Burke investigates a cave in the mountains and finds a decomposed corpse. Upon getting scared by it, he accidentally activates a stuffed toy reindeer that plays Christmas music. As he tries to turn it off, he hears the Mean One coming and decides to hide. He is dragging a dead body into his cave but finds the decomposed corpse uncovered. Burke then accidentally steps on the toy but then manages to throw it away to distract the Mean One. As the Mean One destroys the toy, he starts getting Burke's scent and searches for him but Burke manages to get away and accidentally attacks Doc, who came with a gun. Doc then advises Burke to lock himself in his home and not do anything Christmas related.
At Cindy's home, Burke shows Cindy the wallets and agrees that something's going on here.
The next day, Cindy then starts training and building materials needed to take down the Mean One while Burke starts searching for clues on the Mean One and finds a lot of posters of missing people, who are all hikers.
At a bar, Doc then mournfully kisses a picture of him and his wife before drinking away his sorrows but is then arrested by Hooper for having guns without a permit. Meanwhile at the Egg Heaven, the manager Don is mutilated with a meat hatchet by the Mean One and his body parts are put in a delivery box he got.
The next day, McBean plans to leave town and Sheriff Hooper confronts her over it. She claims to be going to Tahoe to see her sister until New Years but Hooper doesn't care for that and just wonders if McBean did anything that would "bite him in the a**". McBean responds by asking who's looking and when being told that there's trained eyes, she wants him to look elsewhere and he's opened to suggestions. She claims that she's not his deputy anymore and that she can't do his job too which he angrily responds by claiming everything's changed and pointed out the hikers, the diner, Doc, and now Cindy before telling her that the truth will soon see the light of day, indirectly revealing that they might know about the Mean One the whole time but are covering it up. McBean remorselessly tells him to extend the night and that if she burns, she's pulling him into the fire. She then leaves.
At Cindy's house, Cindy is wondering about the Mean One before Burke arrives and reveals that he found something about the hikers. They went hiking in the mountains and went missing during Christmas where the Mean One is seen in the background of every photo that was taken. It's then revealed that the mountains were reserved for hikers and the one who gave them the reservations is Mayor McBean, revealing that she has been luring them to their deaths. Burke put out word to highway patrol to probably search for her. However, Cindy's only concern is the Mean One.
On the road, McBean's car breaks down in the middle of the road and starts playing music. She unsuccessfully tries to stop the music and goes out to check on her engine but is then attacked by the Mean One, who bites her cheek off. He then knocks her to the ground and drags her to her trunk. He then slams the trunk door on her neck several times until her head falls off, killing the corrupt mayor and indirectly avenging the lives that she sacrificed. Her severed head is then seen with her election sticker on the lips while her headless body is dragged away.
At the Sheriff's department, Burke confronts Hooper and the latter finally confesses that he didn't go with McBean's idea at first but after seeing the Mean One murdering a girl named Stephanie and unsuccessfully feeding him animals, he realized that the Mean One is only interested in killing humans and ended up going along with McBean's idea to sacrifice random people, revealing that they not only gaslighted Cindy into thinking she was insane but they also had Cindy's parents and Doc's wife killed. Burke is angry at him for this and Hooper tries to claim that he only took an oath to protect the town and his people but doesn't see the random victims as his people and thinks that he's only saving lives. However, Burke and Doc are angered and disgusted by this because of how many innocent lives were killed and Burke decided to go kill the Mean One so Cindy won't get killed, much to the protests of Doc and Hooper. However, Hooper does give Doc the keys to his cell.
At Cindy's house, Doc visits her but steps in her snare. However, Doc decides to warn her about Burke going to confront the Mean One. Cindy then cuts Doc down and they go to save Burke.
At the cave, Burke starts searching for The Mean One and takes out a gun to shoot him. He then tries luring the Mean One out by singing Christmas songs until he hears him. However, he falls in a trap and gets his foot caught in a bear trap. As he's trying to get free and also trying to get his gun, he then sees the Mean One holding a mistletoe and mockingly making kissy faces. However, he is saved by a redeemed Hooper, who shoots the Mean One to scare him off. He then gets Burke out of the trap and decides to stay behind to right the wrongs that he did. As Cindy and Doc pick up Burke, Hooper sacrifices himself to the Mean One, who kills him. The others hear the noise and Cindy finds Hooper's severed arm. Cindy blames herself for all that's happening and decides to end the Mean One's killing spree once and for all as Burke is taken to the hospital.
At Cindy's house, she decides to lure him with Christmas lights and songs. She then pretends to sleep on the couch as the Mean One breaks inside the house via the chimney and prepares to kill her but she wakes up in time to kick him off and Doc helps her out by shooting at him. Cindy prepares to kill him with a shotgun but he's suddenly gone. As they are searching for him, the Mean One suddenly appears and attacks Doc but Cindy saves him. After Cindy checks to make sure that Doc is okay, she then continues her hunt for the Mean One until he attacks her and they start fighting. She tries shooting at him until he falls into a bear trap but that doesn't affect him. Cindy then picks up a baseball bat covered with Christmas lights and attacks him with it until he fights back and she is forced to run away while distracting him with ornament grenades. As she goes back inside her house, she finds him inside her house and he starts assaulting her with his claws until Doc stuns him with loud noises from the police car and Cindy incapacitates him with an explosive trap.
Too injured from the explosion to fight, Cindy prepares to end him, but she sees that he kept her necklace and asked him the same question she asked him the night that he started stealing Christmas from her during her childhood. In a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that her mother's death was actually unintentional and the Mean One was horrified by what he did. He only became a monster when Cindy called him one, causing his heart to shrink. Realizing that he wasn't always a monster, she kisses his cheek and forgives him for what he did. This causes his heart to grow three times its normal size, but his heart starts growing way too large and as he shouts "GO!" Cindy steps back as his heart explodes from over expansion, killing him instantly.
After his death, he has become a famous urban legend across the world due to a photo of him and is attracting a lot of people to Newville to look for him. As the town of Newville celebrates Christmas again, Cindy and Burke enter a relationship, and Doc stops drinking. However, the narrator claims that the happily ever after will most likely last until next year. As the screen fades to black, the Mean One is heard bellowing, indicating that he either survived the heart explosion, or there’s more than one out there.
In the mid-credits scene, a female streamer is excited about opening her box of Christmas supplies that had been delayed but it turns out to be the box from the Egg Heaven and when she opens it, she finds the owner's remains and screams in horror.
Trivia[]
- This could be considered the worst version of the Grinch. Unlike the original versions, the Mean One is portrayed as a bloodthirsty murderer all for his hatred of Christmas who would go as far as to try and hurt a child and terrorize an entire town for simply liking Christmas.
- The fate of this Grinch is a complete twist of the original. In Dr. Seuss’s story, the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes because he realizes that Christmas is not about gifts, but about being together with one’s family for the holidays. After realizing this, the Grinch changes his ways and becomes a good character. In this film, the Mean One doesn't know the true meaning of Christmas to redeem himself and looks horrified when his heart grows far too large, resulting in his heart literally bursting out of his chest.
- Due to Copyright, the Mean One was never referred to as the Grinch or Mr. Grinch, with some minor scenes using "Mister" before being interrupted.
- The Mean One's name is a play on the well-known song about the Grinch, titled "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch"
- This was even the first live-action Grinch movie that's not made by Universal as well as not being catered towards children.
- It is unknown if Max exists in The Mean One's universe. If he did, it is highly likely he has died by the time Cindy became an adult because the Mean One probably ate him.
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