In the aftermath of the slew of accounts that have lifted the lid off the tradition of abuse under the nose of the leading kids’ entertainment channel, Nickelodeon, “Mr. Crocket” (2024) bears its own peculiar meaning. The film, “Mr. Crocket” (2024) presents a malefic children’s television show as a realm of contesting traumas, one that is inflicted early on by parental figures and the other peddled by the world of the entertainment industry. Despite having a children’s show and children occupying the central place in the zone of contestation, the film in terms of its repulsive visual conventions of gore shares complicities with such ‘matured’ films like “The House that Jack Built” (2018) and even body horror films like “Society” (1989).
At the heart of the story is a children’s TV show host, imperiled by his own traumatic childhood, in hot pursuit of parents who are abusive or even remotely strict despite being otherwise loveable. He crawls out of the TV at night and badgers the abusive fathers to death.
Mr. Crocket (2024) Plot Summary and Movie Synopsis:
Mr. Crocket strikes the small town of Shurry Bottom
In the small sleepy town of Shurry Bottom in 1993, a little free library appears out of nowhere outside the house of little Darren. Inside the little library someone has tucked in a VHS of the children’s show, ‘Mr. Crocket’s World’ for Darren. Once Mr. Crocket is on the screen, Darren has his eyes glued to the TV. Darren wants to continue watching the TV show, completely engrossed in the glow of the television, where the dancing figure of Mr. Crocket keeps him entertained. But Darren’s stepfather becomes livid when he refuses to join his parents at the dinner table and warns him ‘Don’t make me get up from this chair’.
Things turn heated quickly when Darren refuses to eat his vegetables and his stepfather raises his voice. The father’s raised voice acts as a cue for Mr. Crocket on the television to look towards his left offscreen but we soon realize the direction that he looks offscreen is really not in his setting. In fact, Mr. Crocket is trying to get a view of the dinner table from inside the TV. His eyes become visible through the VCR.
When a grinning Mr. Crocket announces himself inside the house, Darren is overjoyed. He talks and moralizes the abusive father. He tries to force-feed the father a serving of worm-blighted, slimy food. When the father does not budge, he takes the more ‘direct’ route — by slitting open his stomach and forcing the food directly inside. Before disappearing with Darren, Mr. Crocket leaves a message for the children: he will be at the children’s disposal to dislodge the abusive parental figure whenever they want.
It is Major’s turn now
A year later, at the memorial service of her recently deceased husband, Summer is waylaid and harangued by a guest for his wayward son, Major. Outside, Major is approached by a homeless lady who grabs his arm and tries to take him with her to protect him. Major starts shouting, which alerts Summer. The lady warns that someone is looking for Major, and Summer should protect him at all costs. The lady constantly hums Mr. Crocket’s jingle and we understand that this is Darren’s mother. That night, the first since Major’s father’s passing, Summer gives Major a whistle which he can blow when he is plagued by horrid dreams.
Summer tries her best at mindful parenting. Meanwhile, someone erects a little library outside their house. Summer decides to have a look inside and what interests her too is the VHS of Mr. Crocket’s World. That same night, Mr. Crocket visits a dark decrepit house of a little girl named Carey who got shouted at by his drug-addict father. When Carey’s father takes aim at Crocket, the latter freezes him and redirects his gun at the father.
Upon pulling the trigger, Crocket’s magic causes the gun to emanate innocuous, shiny bubbles. However, when the father holds a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger, an innocuous bubble comes out of it which enlarges to such a large degree that his head blows off. Carey is relieved and embarks on a journey to the other side of a portal that has been magically opened by Crocket inside her house. Interestingly, Rhonda, Darren’s mother, was aware that Carey was about to be struck. She watches the horror unfold inside the house from outside the window.
What happens when you say things that you do not mean?
Summer, on the other hand, finds it incredibly taxing to keep afloat with her parental duties with an always tantrum-y Major. When she debars Major from watching any more of Mr. Crocket and invites him to play football outside, Major becomes furious. He smashes his father’s framed photograph against the floor. Undeterred by Major’s violent tantrums, Summer refuses to hand over the VHS tape to him which further enrages him.
As a last nail, Major violently throws away his father’s trophy. This causes Summer to have a meltdown and angrily proclaim her desire to rescind the role of playing his only parent. What Summer fails to realize is that her violent proclamation is an invitation for Mr. Crocket. That night Mr. Crocket crawls out of the television as Summer watches in horror. He opens a portal emanating a purple glow with his magical marker and takes Major along to the other dimension. Despite Summer’s desperate attempts, Major does not turn back.
In the kooky world of Mr. Crocket, smiling faces greet Major. Amongst other children, we recognize a happy Darren and Carey. The puppets, including Boogaloo Blue, welcome him. However, unbeknownst to the brainwashed Major, the wacky world is actually one of the pocket dimensions of Hell, populated by demonic entities. The loyal, loveable pets who seem to be benign creatures are actually demonic creatures with their maw ready to chomp down on their prey.
Who does Summer find as an ally?
Summer plasters the entire town with the missing posters of Major. In the local library, while poring over old newspaper reports on missing children, she comes across a report of a police shootout dating back to 1979. She is shocked to find that a children’s TV show host, a man called Emanuel Crocket, also known as Mr. Crocket, was killed in a police encounter while trying to abduct a little boy called Anthony Williams.
At this moment, Summer realizes that Mr. Crocket’s show is playing on a television nearby. When she goes to take a look, Mr. Crocket starts addressing directly to her from inside the television and taunts her. He even warns her to stop going after him as that would cause him to send her and her late husband, Jerrel’s, souls to hell. To scare her further, his hand comes out of the screen and grabs her jacket which causes Summer to flinch and bolt out of the place.
Outside the library, one Eddie Briggs introduces himself to Summer. He claims that he has lost his daughter, Lauren, to the devious Crocket as well. While speaking to Eddie, Summer suddenly remembers about Rhonda and her foreboding hysterics even before the VHS tape could reach her. That night, a horrific dream torments Summer where she watches her husband tearing away his own flesh to turn into Mr. Crocket. Eddie knocks at her door and the two go out in search of Rhonda.
How does Rhonda spy on Mr. Crocket?
Deprived of his son, Rhonda is obsessed with hunting down Crocket to reunite with his son. Inside her shack, Summer is baffled to find an elaborate and intricate system of connected televisions. Rhonda explains that she understood that Crocket needs a way to look back at this dimension and monitor every move of his victims through airwaves. From here, Rhonda became obsessed with tapping into that signal which connects back to Crocket. However, the signals remain jumbled, flickering, and messy which makes it an enormous task to track down the predator.
Rhonda tries to tap into Crocekt’s mind which is wandering everywhere. A child in pain is an invitation for him to revisit his old wounds. Old visuals of his fits with an uncontrollable rage appear on Rhonda’s system. In a fit of rage, Crocket– in attempting to kill Benny the Bison, the hand-puppet figure– violently batters and deforms his own hand.
Rhonda catches on a signal. Crocket is about to arrive at the house of little Kelli who is throwing a tantrum over wanting to stay up late watching Mr. Crocket’s World. The three arrive at Kelli’s house which looks nothing short of a haunted house. The scene is splattered with alphabets written in blood.
Soon it becomes clear that the alphabets are stained with Kelli’s father’s blood whose annihilated and severely mutilated body is not a bearable sight to witness. After making a passage for Kelli to enter the other dimension, Crocket ends up picking up Summer and the rest’s presence in the house.
Who is Eddie really?
Summer and Eddie somehow manage to make it to the other dimension and land in the demonic version of the seemingly benign television show. The children’s favorite jovial sun in the television show (mirroring the sun with a toddler’s face from the popular children’s show, ‘Teletubbies’) is actually the zombied face of a dead man on a demonic bloody moon. As soon as Summer arrives, Crocket arrives too with a deformed Boogaloo Blue and the Chair with crocodile arms. The room of Mr. Crocket which looked so colorful on the other side of the television, at first hand, looks nothing short of a fallen warzone. The brainwashed children arrive and as is expected Major, now heavily under the magical spell of Crocket, fails to notice or recognize Summer.
The film then quickly switches form as Mr. Crocket begins narrating his childhood trauma. In an animation, we are invited to become privy to the traumatic childhood of Crocket where he hints at being abused at a tender age and later killing his own father when he grew up. What started as his desire to become a good parent became an obsessive desire to bring about vigilante resolution to the fate of sometimes demeaning and often just strict parents. His head-on clash with the police in the aftermath of little Anthony’s abduction made him dead. He returned from death to make a deal with the demon to send the souls of every bad parent to hell in exchange for a world of his own.
Summer who was quietly listening to Crocket hitherto calls out to Eddie. However, Eddie meekly surrenders himself to Crocket after revealing himself as Anthony Williams. Much to Eddie’s dismay, Crocket fails to recognize him and does not see him as anything else apart from a bitter adult. He directs Boogaloo Blue into brutally feasting and tearing Anthony apart.
Mr. Crocket (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Summer manage to pull Major out of Mr. Crocket’s spell for good?
Crocket asks a brainwashed Major to choose who would he like his parent to be. Summer apologizes to Major for saying hurtful things in the heat but never meant to say them. As an empty brain devoid of all feelings and memories of human experience, the children, including Major are reduced to human puppets only carrying the memory of the haunted TV show.
For a moment, it seems, Summer is able to resurrect Major from his indoctrinated state. However, Crocket reminds him of the hurtful and demeaning things uttered by Summer. He juxtaposes his caring nature with the neglectful attitude of Summer and asks him to make a choice. Major, thus, returns to Crocket and Summer realizes her incapacity to confront the evil.
Crocket announces to his army of children that they will play a hide-and-seek game and whoever manages to make Summer dead after finding her will win an endless supply of ice cream. This unleashes the untamed children who spy on her and are always after her. When Squawky the Bird attacks her, Summer stomps on it violently and kills it which causes Crocket to find her. The children corner her despite her desperate pleas to help each one of them.
Crocket manipulates Major by teaching him that in order to grow up, one has to bid the past farewell. Drawing examples of the way he disposed of his father, Crocket coaxes Major to endow his mother with the same fate. Crocket conjures up a blade with his magical marker and gives it to Major to finish off his mother.
Recognizing the need to appeal to Major’s suppressed memory and feelings, Summer blows the whistle that she once gifted him. However, Major unbothered and unmoved proceeds to take his mother’s life. As Crocket rejoices in the impending event of a child finally gaining agency over a supposedly abusive parental figure, it is revealed that Major has stolen the magical marker. Summer is spared and she disembowels the self-aggrandizing Crocket with his marker. A portal to the real world zaps open and Summer safely transports all the kids back to their real world.
At the local church, Summer is overjoyed to see that Rhonda has survived her fatal wounds from Crocket attacking her. Darren is relieved to find his way back to his mother. Both the mothers find a friend in each other and Major and Darren become best friends as well.
As the film ends, we are introduced to a guidance counselor who is concerned with Major’s recent violent conduct in school. The counselor hints at Major being succumbed to a state of trauma by his male parental figure. There is a fear surrounding this parental figure in the school amongst the other children who fear that his father would come through their TVs and drag them inside. Major who had been sketching and coloring a family picture sketches a figure akin to Mr. Crocket as his father. In the end, the color box rattles and Major pulls out the magical marker from the box thereby suggesting his unrestrained communication with the world of Crocket.
This is symptomatic of the continued trauma of children in the real world. It means that as long as the children continue to suffer at the hands of their caregivers, even the most loving ones, Mr. Crocket and his world can only be rebuffed but not annihilated.
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