Sean Parker
In 2022, writer-director Brandon Espy creeped the hell out of parents everywhere with his short film Mr. Crocket, released as part of Hulu’s short film showcase Bite-Size Halloween. Every episode in the series was a macabre short film filled with imaginative ideas, but Mr. Crocket was one of the all-time highlights. The setup was straightforward. An unruly boy, a tired mother, and the futility of yelling over a television that endeavored to exacerbate a disciplinary situation. At just over six minutes, Espy let loose an analog Babadook onto the world that looks like Mr. Rogers, scaring every adult watching in the process. It would seem the efforts of Espy’s short would serve as proof of concept for a feature-length film as only two years later, Mr. Crocket is back to even the score on parents that lose their temper.
Espy comes out swinging with his debut feature. Taking us back to the early ’90s, the audience watches as a family’s dinner becomes borderline abusive, as “father knows best” arrogance and ill-tempered, authoritative demands of respect lead to scenes of force-feeding. If you were a kid in the ’90s with strict parents, this could have been a scene from your own dinner table. It was shockingly relatable to this writer. My eyes barely blinked as the situation felt voyeuristically ripped from the depths of my past, having witnessed a similar event unfold at my breakfast table some thirty-plus years ago. It’s perhaps the most haunted I’ve been by a scene in a long time, but Mr. Crocket had earned my attention.
As the situation deteriorates, that friendly face greeting parents on the hard shell of the VHS tape finds his way through the TV set as if summoned by the thoughts of any child wishing they had different parents. Mr. Crocket (Godfather of Harlem’s Elvis Nolasco) brings his public access show to that dinner table. Suddenly, the scene gets surreal. Imagine Pee Wee’s Playhouse if his chair were to become a fleshy, talking, teeth-ridden horror. The audience watches as this children’s show host magically turns the food into an unappealing gruel and compels the “man of the house” to incur the same cruelty he inflicted on his son. As far as justice against bad parenting goes, there’s no escape from the hell of Mr. Crocket’s neighborhood, and with tremendous exultation, I gleefully awaited the next scene.
Resetting with a new family, the audience is introduced to Summer (Servant’s Jerrika Hinton) and her son Major (Ayden Gavin) on the precipice of a funeral for Major’s father. Major may still be too young to understand what’s happening, and his mother is doing her best with her bereavement. As Major continues to act out, the Mr. Crocket tape appears, and after a fight between Major and his mother, the celluloid demon absconds with Major to another realm. Summer begins finding clues that others have experienced this too and teams up with other parents to get their children back.
There’s a wonderful commentary wrapped up in Mr. Crocket about parents not necessarily watching their kids. From the late ’60s to the late ’80s, a celebrity would come on the television at ten in the evening just to remind folks if they knew where their children were. This, of course, brought about the famous line, “Have you checked the children?” in When a Stranger Calls in 1979, but it also aligns with a certain amount of suburban panic from that era. Remember, this is the age when kids were encouraged to come home when the streetlamps turned on, and home security systems were growing increasingly popular. As those fears have inevitably risen, the new age babysitter in the ’90s was the VCR, only evolving into DVDs and eventually YouTube or streaming networks in the 2020s to keep kids inside. And while we trust our children are watching entertainment made for them while we’re fixing dinner or attending to necessary tasks, we may have no idea what they’re learning about when our backs are turned.
I’m the uncle to a very precocious four-year-old obsessed with action-figure-based YouTube videos, but even I’m put off by some of what comes his way. This causes us to have a few content-based altercations, but while none offer near the same eruption as what transpires between Summer and Major, I’m sure my nephew has still had plenty of rage-fueled moments where he wished I were elsewhere rather than spoil his fun. Mr. Crocket offers an antagonist argument for disciplinary action. However, I think the line blurs a little between acceptable parenting and letting a kid have their way all the time. All it takes is a child’s wish for Mr. Crocket to appear and never mind the sins of the parent. The film eventually shows the negative side-effects of being a child’s best friend instead of the caring guiding force, but it gets a little too messy on the way there.
After witnessing some absolute lowest-bar parenting in the storyline, Mr. Crocket comes for Major, whose mom is going through an exceptionally difficult time. When I started Mr. Crocket, I knew I was in for a rollercoaster, but I didn’t know I’d be on Summer’s side so quickly, given Mr. Crocket‘s previous altercations. While I suppose a wish is a wish to a magic VHS demon and that he probably doesn’t care about the difference between a violent father and a grieving mother, the comparison is a sinker. While Summer is in a bit of a Babadook situation, I don’t believe she wishes her son was gone and is beginning to see he’s all she has.
Nolasco is pitch-perfect as Mr. Crocket. The character is a densely packed minefield of comedic horror ideals that are as deranged as they are somewhat well-intentioned, and Nolasco delivers a truly fantastic performance by offering a Freddy Kruger aesthetic of confident, chaotic energy and occasional one-liners. The film uses a lot of other horror movie moments, sprinkling in some I Saw the TV Glow, The Ring, Candyman, Five Nights at Freddies, Little Monsters (1989), and the Banana Splits Movie. Add in the film’s fantastic art direction, effects, cartoon artistry, and puppetry, and it’s glitteringly apparent why it’s so easy to be drawn into Mr. Crocket. That being said, for as good as Nolasco and the practical effects work is, the story here seems to dry up in the final act, causing some malaise in the film’s wrap-up.
There are a lot of great ideas, subtext, and bonkers effects that certainly propel the film into positive territory. Still, the story itself is a bit disconnected, and it never really manages to hit all of the notes it’s going for. Summer’s a great mom, and Hinton plays the character well, but I wonder what it would have been like for a not-so-great character to go to hell and back for their child. Give me flawed characters that need to change for their kids to grow. Show the slipping veneer of a great parent who becomes terrible once they’re no longer in the public eye or the parent who does everything for their kid only to be looked down upon by the other parents. If sequels are in the future for Mr. Crocket, I would love a less innocuous take. There’s a lot to like about Mr. Crocket, both the character and the film, and others have told me how much they loved it. I just think it’s a little undercooked.
Mr. Crocket is available to stream on Hulu on October 11.
Mr. Crocket | Official Trailer | Hulu
Parents, meet your worst nightmare. #MrCrocketHulu premieres October 11. SUBSCRIBE TO HULU’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL Click the link to subscribe to our channel for the latest shows & updates: http://www.youtube.com/hulu?sub_confirmation=1 START YOUR FREE TRIAL http://hulu.com/start FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hulu/ Hulu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hulu Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hulu ABOUT HULU Hulu is the leading all-in-one premium streaming service that offers an expansive slate of live and on-demand entertainment, both in and outside the home.
