Clowns are having a moment in pop culture: The Joker. The People’s Joker. Art the Clown. Half of the contestants on Dragula. Hulu’s new original film Mr. Crocket is vibrating on a slightly different frequency: These are the bright colors and strained smiles of ‘90s kids’ TV, not the circus kind. (Think Barney & Friends, but evil.) But its demented carnivalesque style is close enough to count. In the gore scenes – which are surprisingly plentiful, given the premise – it frequently recalls the Terrifier movies, in which the action completely stops so the audience can admire the practical effects. This is not a compliment.
Mr. Crocket builds on director Brandon Espy’s short film of the same name, produced for Hulu’s Bite Size Halloween anthology series in 2022. The short established the broad outlines of the premise, which remain the same in the feature: Single mom Summer (Jerrika Hinton) is at her limit dealing with her hyperactive son Major (Ayden Gavin), whose obsession with a kids’ show hosted by Mr. Crocket (Elvis Nolasco) gives Summer brief respite and drives her up the wall. The feature-length version gives the unsettlingly cheerful kids’ show host a moralistic motivation as well as some deep lore. Both additions complicate the concept, and one of them undermines it.
On the positive side, the new Mr. Crocket surrounds Nolasco with a menagerie of mascots designed by illustrator Alex Pardee. The daytime versions of the critters are what you’d expect: Chipper and colorful, with big smiles and shiny fur. But the nightmare versions are where it’s really at, as Pardee and the film’s effects team skin the creatures to expose dangling eyeballs, raw strips of flesh, and rows of fangs caked with flesh. The ways Mr. Crocket uses these characters can be derivative: The specter of Poltergeist looms every time they beam out of a tube TV, and they deliver comeuppance with shades of similar scenes from the Nightmare on Elm Street series. But the puppets themselves? No notes.
Where Mr. Crocket gets messy is the title character’s messianic mission, punishing bad parents and taking their kids away to his TV world where everyone is happy and no one has a dad – let alone an abusive one. This is where much of the film’s grit comes from: One little girl has a neglectful junkie father. Another boy has a bullying stepdad who force feeds him until he cries. Both of these parental figures get punishments that fit their crimes, which is where those Terrifier-esque gore scenes come in. All of this is fine, as is a disturbingly jolly animated sequence that establishes the painful backstory behind Mr. Crocket’s disturbed worldview.
The problem is that this idea doesn’t jibe with the film’s Babadook-esque characterization of Summer, who loses her patience with Major sometimes but overall is a decent parent who’s trying her best. She even has a sympathetic backstory, establishing that her husband/Major’s dad died recently, and that both she and Major are struggling to contain their grief. And yet Mr. Crocket comes for her anyway, raising questions the undercooked script isn’t prepared to answer. If Mr. Crocket only takes kids from bad, evil parents, what does it mean that he’s going after Summer and Major? Were his other victims caring on some level, too? Because they certainly weren’t portrayed that way.
On the whole, Mr. Crocket seems to be aiming for a vibe similar to that of the ’90s horror anthologies Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Hood, which mixed kitschy premises with real-world terrors to edgy effect. The same occurs here, as Espy places a story full of sinister takes on childlike imagery in a realistically downbeat, working-class environment populated mostly by people of color. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Crocket is too crude in its execution to consistently evoke that tricky hybrid tone.
The scripting is obvious, the performances are inconsistently campy, and the pacing sputters throughout. The screenplay in particular could have used a few more drafts to resolve its clumsy exposition and thematic contradictions. But everything about Mr. Crocket – except, again, for the effects sequences – could use some refinement. Espy is a young director, and his debut feature going straight to Hulu isn’t such a bad outcome given that he’s obviously still working the kinks out of his style. He does display a nasty streak of creativity that can be quite appealing in a horror director, which makes me interested in what he'll do next. He just has to strengthen his fundamentals first.
