Im not a huge fan of the ‘parody’ horror genre. I find it a little bit predictable as a format because these things generally always run the same ‘take a much beloved IP thats been held by some copyright ghoul for the better part of half a century and release it to the general public’ and whats the first thing people do? they make twisted, demented cheap and lazy horror or pornographic parodies of it.

Its almost like withholding something from peoples use for prolongued periods of time causes people to narrow their views on the potential said IP COULD have once it IS publically accessable.

Things like ‘Winnie the Pooh’ could find a new life with a whole new generation of children, if the right soul took the much beloved character and applied it successfully utilizing more modern sensibilities…but no, instead we get ‘Blood and Honey’ and a clambouring to make gory Pooh content and porn parodies…This is why we cant have nice things…

So when ‘The Mean One’ landed on my desk this week, I was a bit hesitant to hit play, knowing that essentially I was letting myself in for a predictable 90 minute dance of ‘heres a loved character, now he’s goring people and swearing’…But y’know what? out of all the ‘Parody’ horror films i’ve seen. This ones probably one of the best. Its by no means perfect! but I thought it handled itself pretty well right up until the 3rd act.

The plot? the films set in the town of ‘Newville’ (gettit! cuz ‘Whoville’ lol…ugh…) and we open 20 years in the past to a young girl named Cindy catching a mysterious green figure (who…they may or may not legally be unable to call ‘The Grinch’) wandering around her living room and possibly stealing presents. Cindys mum wakes up and sees the great beast and tries to attack it, ‘The Mean One’ as he’s dubbed here retaliates and accidentally kills cindys mum. traumatizing her thoroughly before dissapearing into the night.

Now 20 years later (in the present day) Cindy is returning to the family home for the first time since the incident, after years of being ridiculed and labelled as crazy. Her dads picked her up, and the pair of them are going to spend christmas together. But no sooner do the pair deck the halls and get the christmas cheer swinging. then ‘The Mean One’ comes back causing carnage. Cindy is clearly re-traumatized by the Mean Ones return. and so she begins to plan to gather evidence and to do whatever she can to ensure the Mean One doesnt ruin another christmas ever again.

And…for the vast majority of this movie. I was actually pretty alright with it. The script starts off strong with some likeable, but not particularly unique characters in a solid, but not particularly ‘original’ storyline. it opens with a bit of a clip behind it and it seems to have its tone about right.

Unfortunately, around halfway through the second act, the film begins to lose a little momentum. things slow down as the towns sheriff starts pushing back on Cindys requests to perform a manhunt in the mountains for the beast, and the introduction of a fairly charming, but also fairly generic ‘crazy ralph’ type mountain man who’s hunting ‘The Mean One’ for his own personal vengences does nothing to really help pep things up.

Things get slower and slower as the 2nd act progresses until, by the third act we kind of hit a fork in the road when the inevitable ‘final confrontations’ occur, where the film could choose to either rev up and take things to a new and unique place, or play it safe and rev down…Unfortunatley, in my opinion, the film chooses to rev down…meaning we get a kind of generic ‘home invasion’ piece for the last 10 minutes that devolves into 2-4 people just hitting each other in a not particularly interesting way.

While the final FINAL plot twists in the film are kind of interesting and fun takes on the original books. By the time those twists had come around, the film had warmed down and slowed down so much I was already starting to clock watch a bit. it’d lost me. Which is a shame, because there IS a genuinely pretty solid picture beneath the surface on this one, and I feel they utilize the ‘Mean One’ quite well here.

One of the bigger stumbling blocks with the script for this is that it doesnt really seem to know what kind of tone it wants to go for, and as such it kind of dances around multiple styles, never quite committing to any one piece. and as a result it leaves a trail of unfinished concepts lying in its wake.

For example, in moments of this film they play around with the ‘Psychological horror’ angle, questioning if this is all in Cindys mind or not. But they never really develop it beyond some of the locals calling her crazy, and a few scenes where they really play up the horror, only to reveal it was all just a dream.

I think it would have been interesting to really lean into the psycho horror aspect of this, maybe make a real attempt at blurring the lines between what Cindy *thinks* she sees and whats REALLY going on. you could have really played with the idea that Cindy MAY in fact be more involved in things that she really realizes. But no….the film sticks on a pretty rigid ‘generic horror/ghost train’ 3 act pathway…

They play around with comedy in places here (I assume to live up to the ‘Parody’ monikre) but that feels really out of place and innapropriate when its lined up against people experiencing PTSD and battling alcoholism.

they dont even really seem to fully know HOW HARD they want the horror to go, as some of this film is pretty tame even by YA standards, and then there are a few moments where it goes full ‘Terrifier’ or ‘Ash Vs The Evil Dead’

I feel like this film lacks a sense of consistency in its scripting which is a bit of a problem throughout…

that being said the characters are pretty solid, they’re given just enough character that you get a feel for them, but not enough that they get *TOO* pigeon hole’d into the horror architypes, which was good because it did add an extra layer of tension, as you cant quite tell who’s on what side of this thing.

Unfortunately; an element that does hold the characters back a bit is that the dialogues a bit spotty. at best theres a couple of fun lines here and there. on average its a bit middling, pithy and ‘worn’…at worst, there are a few lines here where they tried to make the characters feel a bit more. ‘ethereal’ and ‘wise’…and I shot soda out my nose gaffawing. it was SO bad. the kind of writing an angsty 13 year old puts into a poem to impress a girl…On the whole, its PASSABLE, but those bad moments…eesh.

Outside of the script however the rest of the films jsut kind of ‘on the level’ not good enough to be notably praised, not bad enough to be derided…’Better than fine’ is how i’ve phrased it when talking about this film to friends.

The direction is WELL above the standards of this subgenre, delivering a clear and creative vision with some pretty decent visual plans and its clear that communication was critical to this thing, as everyones in lock step.

theres some decent colour usage, the lighting throughout is pretty rock solid, direction of the cast is good. with some clear set space usage and utilization and it seems like the cast were given some flexibility on their movements and line delivery…with mixed results…but mostly good ones!

the cine too is WELL above the standard for these kind of films, really well composed they make the best of the lighting and set space to really drive the cold christmassyness of the mountain town and the cozy warmth of a christmas laiden home. I really quite enjoyed this thing for the most part. But there were a couple of things I took umbridge with.

The first being the overealiance on CGI effects in the 3rd act. theres a LOT of CGI blood and fire used in the finale, and its obvious, and its ugly…and while I appreciate practical effects can be expensive and at time impractical. shoving some fire overlays onto a shot without blending them properly and then calling it a day gave me real ‘rush job’ vibes and really pulled me out of the story.

the other issue is the overeliance on stock video and imagery. again, this seems to mainly be in the ending. But a good 2-3 minutes of the finale is just purchased stock footage or stock images. it didnt match the rest of the film footage, they’d ‘enhanced’ it with more CGI overlays…It again just kind of pulled me out of the movie and made me think ‘oh…I guess the money ran out’ rather than ‘Oh wow! look at all that stock footage!’

The edit too, while largely fine on a scene by scene basis, I feel could have done with another pass through, particularly in the second half of the second act, and the third act. I think they nailed the first. but the back half of this film felt like a good 10-15 minutes could have been chopped and would have resulted in a much stronger end product.

Ultimately, this is probably the best ‘IP Parody horror’ film i’ve seen make it through the full production process. did I love it? no. would I rewatch it? maybe…I think in the right circumstancer I could see myself revisiting this one…but it probably wont be for a while. its a solid enough work, but just those odd niggles here and there stopped it from ultimately being the absolute best it could have been. Which is a real shame as, for the most part. I really quite enjoyed this one.

Maybe recommended if your doing a movie marathon with some hits and misses intentionally thrown into the mix. I think your milage may vary on how forgiving you are towards IP parody horror honestly.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-mean-one/