Haley Joel Osment will star in Kevin Smith’s movie about a child-eating Christmas demon
Haley Joel Osment will always be the kid who saw dead people from The Sixth Sense—that is his cross to bear until he stops looking exactly how you’d expect a grown-up version of the kid from The Sixth Sense to look. Since quietly bowing out of big studio filmmaking after 2003’s Secondhand Lions, Osment has kept busy with video game voice-over work, roles in miniseries like The Spoils Of Babylon, and with a part as a Montana hick on the run from the law—alongside Olympia Dukakis—in a little-seen movie called The Misadventures Of The Dunderheads.
No doubt hoping to top that last credit in sheer craziness, Osment has signed on to star in Anti-Claus. The brainchild of Kevin Smith, Anti-Claus is about the Krampus, a figure from Alpine folklore who visits naughty children around Christmastime, drags them back to his lair, and eats them. Smith expounded on the film’s cultural context:
“In America, we’re taught that nice kids gets presents from Santa and naughty kids get coal. But in countries like Germany, Austria, Bavaria, Romania and Hungary, Christmas is more metal than merry: Saint Nicholas brings a sack full of toys for good kids and the Krampus carries an empty bag for taking away the bad kids. I wanna see THAT Christmas movie. So rather than wait for it, we’ll make it instead.”
Osment will also be seen in Keven Smith’s Tusk, about a man who’s surgically transformed into a walrus. It is unknown what role Osment will play in Anti-Claus, but the film can safely be added to a list of movies you never thought you’d see starring the little kid from A.I.