It feels like there’ve been a spate of movies about evil things happening on videotape lately. There’s Late Night With the Devil, there’s Skinamarink, I guess there was Ringu a long time ago, arguably Videodrome.

Anyway, this is another one of those. It’s the ’80s, and whenever a kid is being mistreated, a “little library” box shows up on the curb, and in it is a videotape of the titular Mr. Crocket’s kid’s show. When the kid watches it, it opens a portal for Mr. Crocket to come and take away the kid and/or kill the parents.

So Mr. Crocket’s a good guy, right? Wellllll, no. Some of the parents who meet a grisly death deserve it, but turns out that a magical demon who responds to kids’ wishes may not be doing a great job at distinguishing between an abusive parent and a parent who cruelly forced a kid to turn off the TV and do some homework. (This is made a little awkward in that one of the protagonists is supposed to be one of those good parents, but tbh seems a little insane. But that’s just bad writing.)

It’s decent enough, and it has a few moments that will stab at any parent who’s ever wondered if they’re screwing it up (which is to say: any parent). But it’s not as sharp as it could be, and whatever it’s trying to do ends up feeling muddled.

Also: Those “little libraries” hit me as an anachronism in the movie — I don’t remember those existing back then (and Wikipedia backs me up, saying that they appeared first in 2002). There’s also an egregiously modern flashlight that someone has at one point, a super-bright, super-tiny LED that gives a steady cool beam of even illumination. I suspect that key people who made this movie weren’t actually alive back then, and didn’t even know that these were details they should be thinking about. (As I get older, I feel more sympathy for people who nitpick anachronisms, because if you do remember a time period, boy do they throw you out of it.)