Horrifying New Character Debuts After Disney Loses Original Mickey Mouse

It was inevitable, really. The moment Steamboat Willie entered the public domain in January 2024, the internet held its breath, waiting to see who would be first to turn the most famous mouse in history into something monstrous. The answer, it turns out, is a growing list of low-budget horror filmmakers—and one of them has just released a film in which Mickey Mouse, rebranded as “Steamboat Willie,” does far more than whistle.

Before we get to the carnage, it’s worth remembering how we got here. The 1928 short Steamboat Willie marked the debut of Mickey Mouse and became a foundational piece of The Walt Disney Company’s iconography. But 95 years later, the copyright expired, thrusting the early, black-and-white version of the character into the public domain. The change opened the floodgates for reinterpretation—and for filmmakers willing to test just how far a rodent can go.

The first out of the gate was Jamie Bailey’s The Mouse Trap, a shoestring horror that imagined a demented Mickey-like figure stalking victims through an amusement arcade. The reviews were swift and brutal. Still, the genre—public-domain horror built on corrupted childhood memories—proved to have an audience.

Mickey Mouse, Meet the Slasher Genre

Enter Screamboat, writer-director Steven LaMorte’s absurdist horror-comedy about a killer cartoon mouse terrorizing a group of New Yorkers aboard a steamboat. The film was announced within 24 hours of the copyright expiration, and now, after months of anticipation and concern, the reviews are in.

And, to the surprise of many, Screamboat is… not entirely terrible.

“There is a weirdly undeniable charm to the shlockiness of Screamboat,” Metro wrote in a middling 2.5-star review, praising LaMorte’s liberal use of Disney references—ranging from obvious to oddly clever. The review also made note of the film’s more disturbing visual flourishes, including Steamboat Willie cutting off a penis and tearing off a character’s nose. Nice.

Variety echoed the sentiment, stating: “The murders may be grisly, but they’re played almost entirely for laughs.” However, it wasn’t all praise. “Screamboat is most taxing when it tries to be serious,” the review noted, taking aim at the film’s performances. Amy Schumacher, as the ship’s medic, was cited as competent at best. “She knows her lines,” Variety concluded.

Still, Screamboat seems to understand its lane. “It’s not something people buy a ticket to when their arthouse movie of choice isn’t available,” RogerEbert.com said. “It could be funnier. It could be a lot smarter. It could look better. But it also could have been significantly worse.” In other words, it’s self-aware schlock. “It knows that you don’t need to be great if you’re this Goofy.”

IGN was even more blunt. “Screamboat is, for better and worse, the epitome of ‘Dumb Fun.’” The film doesn’t aim high, but it delivers for viewers who are there for “indulgently bloody kill sequences.” While it may lack polish, IGN declared it “leagues above the competition in the widening sea of public-domain Steamboat Willie horror parodies.”

Not everyone was willing to play along. The Guardian dismissed the film as “cut-price, retrograde and reactionary” and suggested that it stood no chance in an era when horror has found new creative highs.

A CGI Mouse and Middling Mayhem

At the center of the film is David Howard Thornton—best known as Art the Clown in the Terrifier trilogy—playing the murderous mouse. Critics have had a mixed response to the creature design. “Thornton stars as LaMorte’s ‘Steamboat Willie,’ looking less like his animated inspiration and more like the midpoint of an Animorphs cover illustration,” IGN said.

RogerEbert.com was equally unimpressed. “The creature design… never really looks like it’s sharing the same physical space with the other characters,” it noted. While Thornton is buried under prosthetics and CGI, the film might have been better served by letting him perform physically—rather than digitally—within the carnage.

As of now, Screamboat holds a 61% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 64% audience score. For a film that shows a twisted Mickey Mouse slicing off genitals and wreaking havoc on a steamboat, those are surprisingly decent numbers.

The movie is now in limited release. Whether Screamboat is a one-time novelty or a sign of things to come in the world of post-copyright horror remains to be seen. Either way, Steamboat Willie has officially left the dock—and he’s not coming back whistling.

Do you plan on seeing Steamboat?