After having stolen Christmas, The Grinch is back and going on a killing spree in The Mean One trailer. The Christmas horror movie brings a slasher twist to Dr. Seuss' iconic holiday-hating character, with the titular creature terrorizing the sleepy mountain town of Newville around the December season. David Howard Thornton, best known for playing Art the Clown in the Terrifier movies, is leading the cast of The Mean One as the Grinch-like character alongside Krystle Martin as Cindy You-Know-Who, Chase Mullins, John Bigham and Erin Baker.

With just over a week remaining until it hits theaters, director Steven LaMorte has taken to his YouTube account to share the official The Mean One trailer. The video offers the first proper look at the upcoming Christmas horror movie, introducing audiences to heroine Cindy-You-Know-Who as she seeks revenge on The Grinch for killing her parents as a child and stopping the humbug in the middle of his killing spree. Check out the trailer below:


Could The Mean One Share In 2022's Horror Movie Success?


The Mean One is the latest in a rising new trend for the horror genre of delivering chilling twists on childhood characters. Rhys Frake-Waterfield is taking a similar slasher revenge approach with Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, in which the titular character is going on a murder spree to kill his former friend Christopher Robin, while also currently working on a Peter Pan-based horror movie. It was also recently announced that Frake-Waterfield is producing a Bambi-based horror movie, and while plot details are currently unknown, it is expected to see the titular animal hunting down the human hunters who killed his mother, which is also reportedly eyeing a late 2023 release.

While these films have become viral talking points online, it will be interesting to see if it translates to box office success for The Mean One and its counterparts. Considering the divisive reaction to putting horrific twists on characters audiences grew up loving, they could find themselves flopping in their theatrical releases should some feel a desire to boycott them all and shut down this new trend. On the flip side, the curiosity to see how absurd these concepts are on screen could lead to at least one of them becoming a box office hit, be it The Mean One or Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, which is coming to theaters in February for one night only.

With The Mean One slated for an early December release, it has a lot riding on its shoulders with whether it helps or hurts the horror genre's 2022 box office run. Beginning back in January with Radio Silence's Scream revival, the majority of horror movies released this year set a positive trend of box office hits, ranging from the expected smash successes of The Black Phone and Jordan Peele's Nope to the sleeper hits of X, Pearl, Barbarian, Terrifier 2 and Smile re-affirming the genre's strength following a rocky jump back to theaters following the COVID-19 pandemic. Only time will tell when The Mean One hits theaters on December 9.