Mr. Crocket

• Directed by Brandon Espy in his feature directorial debut
• October 11, 2024
• Based on Espy’s 2022 short film of the same name Mr. Crocket

A mother must rescue her son from a demonic children’s television host that is kidnapping kids.

The themed killer has been around for ages in horror. Sometimes they are built around a holiday or like here are an attempted poke at something in particular. This tries to take a shot at direct-to-video children’s tripe or even kids shows and comes up short.

There were a few things that I heard about Mr. Crocket that appealed to me but seeing the execution are not as solid as I wanted. Like how our villain of Mr. Crocket (Elvis Nolasco) connects with victims. I like a creepy children’s show host to be the threat but victims by videocassette? Is this a riff on The Ring? That would’ve worked a little better 20 or 30 years ago when cheap videocassettes could be found in every Dollar General and discount retail outlet across the nation. This looks like it’s set very much in the present day, but given the presence of videocassettes and the presence of a TV/VCR combo it’s clearly not. I read it is set in 1993 but where is that indicated?

Mr. Crocket never gets too heavy with gore or dark comedy even though it ventures very near to both. There are no surprises and even a level of predictability in the movie. A prime example is what is going on with the guy (Alex Alomar Akpobome) whom the mother (Jerrika Hinton) trusts right when he shows up is pretty obvious. His true motivations are clear before he even explains them.

Mr. Crocket is collecting unloved children so he can love them. He doesn’t appear to be a pedophile which absolutely would’ve been a logical twist. He was just an abused kid who grew into a disturbed adult and is trying to save the kids he finds from perceived abuse. No sense of tragedy or pathos. I would not want a rehab of a demonic kidnapper but in this case muddying the waters is acceptable.

In the climax the hero mom’s son cuts Mr. Crocket with his magic magic marker and the survivors escape through the portal back into the real world or out of hell. It looks like the kid had some fear of Mr. Crocket but then in what is meant as a swerve he willingly takes Mr. Crocket back into his life or something? I don’t know what’s going on there. 

Crocket’s defeat was pretty basic for an individual that made a deal with the Devil in order to send evil parents to Hell. It was a slash across the stomach. The marker itself wasn’t even that significant to the character until then. It appeared as part of a bit in one of the videos and never beyond that. No hint of its importance.

I didn’t laugh. I didn’t get scared. There was no dark humor. This aimed for a murderous version of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse which given the strangeness of that show should have been easy. This had so much to build on but failed to do just that leaving the viewer with little to talk about. This padded the short film rather than expanding upon it.

Mr. Crocket is a bit of a letdown. It’s an attempted throwback to an older style of horror film that never quite comes together.