1980s nostalgia is out and 1990s nostalgia is in, with the horror genre doling out films like I Saw the TV Glow (review) and now Mr. Crocket, an adaptation of Brandon Espy’s 2022 short of the same name (itself a part of Hulu’s Bite Size Halloween series). Espy’s feature debut sadly sees the filmmaker struggling to find inspiration, working with a pedestrian script despite some impressive gore effects and puppetry.
It’s 1994 in the town of Shurry Bottom, PA, and Summer (Jerrika Hinton, Hunters) has recently been widowed following the tragic death of her husband. She’s left to raise their son Major (Ayden Gavin) on her own, but finds herself struggling to deal with his public outbursts and temper tantrums as he attempts to process his own grief. Following a particularly nasty fight between the two of them, a magic mailbox suddenly appears in their front yard, delivering a VHS tape of an old children’s show called Mr. Crocket’s World. It’s not long before Mr. Crocket (Elvis Nolasco, Godfather of Harlem) himself crawls out of Summer’s television screen and kidnaps Major, forcing her to face her own demons and save her son before he’s permanently trapped in Crocket’s hellish world.
Espy apes a lot from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series while sticking to tired tropes as his film limps to the finish line. There’s enough material to fill the runtime, so while this isn’t a case of a short being unnecessarily stretched to feature length, the execution is notably lacking. It makes similar, mediocre films like The Banana Splits Movie and Willy’s Wonderland look practically innovative by comparison. Hell, you’ll find a better magic mailbox movie in The Lake House.
Where Mr. Crocket excels is in its puppetry and practical gore effects. A cold open that homages (or rips off, you decide) Greta’s death in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 is particularly gruesome, as is another sequence involving a gun that fires bubbles instead of bullets. Money was well spent there, and the same applies to the devilish puppets that act as Crocket’s underling’s (a welcome addition that wasn’t included in the original short). These have a decidedly low-budget feel to them, similar to what you’d see in a ’90s-era Nickelodeon show. One might wonder why the children aren’t even the slightest bit afraid of these creations, but they’re honestly not that far off from some of the imagery you’d find in The Ren & Stimpy Show or Courage the Cowardly Dog (the ’90s were a wild time!). The more phantasmagorical imagery, however, call to mind the aforementioned’90s-set I Saw the TV Glow, a film that has far more ambition than Mr. Crocket.
Crocket, an amalgamation of classic children’s television show hosts like Mr. Rogers and Reading Rainbow‘s LeVar Burton, is a decent enough antagonist, but Espy can’t make him the Freddy Krueger-type figure he so clearly wants him to be. Any mystique the character has is wiped away during an admittedly impressive animated story time sequence that doles out clunky exposition for the character. Less would have been more here.
Performances are all serviceable, with Hinton finding the pathos in a good mother who makes one terrible mistake, but Espy’s screenplay doesn’t give her much to work with. The grief she feels over her husband’s passing is never really explored, with an early funeral scene meant to stand in for legitimate character development. Shortcuts like this only hinder Mr. Crocket, reducing what could have been a layered interrogation of parental struggles to a hokey footnote in horror canon. Had Espy leaned more into camp (one of the puppet creatures screaming “Do it, pussy!” elicits the appropriate laughs) there would be some fun to be had, but those moments are so few and far between that they don’t mesh well with the more serious approach he takes to the parenting aspects of the story.
Attention to period detail is minimal, seeing Espy populating his sets with VHS players, tube TVs and a Game Gear, or slapping Casper on a movie theater marquee, as if those alone will suffice. Visually, the film has a sheen to it that betrays its period setting, making it feel distinctly modern. The lore of Crocket’s world is ill-defined, but the production design is somewhat striking, with its colorful textures offering a welcome reprieve from the duller real-world locations.
All of this might be somewhat forgivable if Espy’s screenplay didn’t follow every horror movie trope with the utmost devotion. We’ve got nightmare fake-outs, an obligatory microfiche investigation, a Chekhov’s dead dad’s whistle whose sentimental value may be able to fight off Crocket (spoiler alert: it will), and about halfway into the runtime we get the introduction of a new character who may or may not have ulterior motives (spoiler alert: they do, and their heel-turn is not the least bit surprising by the time it’s revealed at the most inopportune time for Summer).
The cons outweigh the pros in Mr. Crocket, seeing Espy expand upon his short film with a pedestrian script and an overall lack of inspiration. The practical effects are laudable, but they’re not enough to save a feature that should have just been left as a short.
Mr. Crocket had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest and will be released on Hulu on October 11.
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