Crackcoon Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Crackcoon Blu-ray Movie Review

No thanks...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown December 28, 2024

First there was Cocaine Bear, my go-to guilty pleasure flick of 2023. Now comes Crackcoon, which... I mean, come on. Just look at the screenshot below. And with a plot synopsis as simple as "a raccoon on crack terrorizes a mountain community?" Yes please, yes please. I don't care how bad it is, how cheesy, how campy. The more the better. I just didn't expect it to be this bad. Somewhere between its low-rent production design and even lower budget, there's just not enough here to justify watching a dozen or so amateur actors tromp around the woods and tear off their shirts because... plot, I guess? The only exciting thing Crackcoon accomplishes is imagining what other inebriated-animal horror comedies might be on the horizon. Meth-amphibian? Fentanyl-igator? Octo-Opioid? Placebo-saurus? Heroin Heron? God help us. God help us all.

After a synthetically-altered street drug is discarded in the woods by a drug dealer during a car chase with police, the fallout proves horrific. When an innocent raccoon eats the bag of crack, it transforms into a nightmarish killing machine with a thirst for bloooooodddd. Except the Crackcoon we all showed up for? He frequents the film but is barely glimpsed, undoing the magic of that magnificent bloodthirsty puppet and putting too much focus on a bunch of would-be actors doing their best to be funny. It's cute. Kinda amusing. But then it gets desperate, swapping out cheap nudity for laughs and dead bodies for vicious kills. One particular death combines the two -- and actually works -- when a poor naked woman goes from being, ahem, pleasured to being devoured. The arterial spray gets real, and real quick, as she thrashes to the entertainment of all the sickos in the horror/comedy audience.

Otherwise Crackcoon is much ado about nothing; the best thing about the flick being its cover art, which promises wild, wonderful West Virginian thrills that never come. The filmmakers poke fun at Bible-thumping Evangelicals and... crack? Drug abuse? Not really sure. It's a mess. But there are at least plenty of deaths and the body count barrels towards twenty with a fair amount of reckless abandon. If only the whole production didn't look so cheap. Some of the best so-bad-it's-good movies are those that look the part, and Crackcoon definitely does not. It better resembles the sort of thing a group of teenagers with a camera would make on a weekend. Shots are uninteresting, kills aren't staged all that well, even the sexy bits aren't sexy. And cinematography? What's that? Don't be lured in by the cover or the concept. Even if you're looking for a campy blast, it isn't here. All that lies down this path is disappointment.

Crackcoon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

It doesn't look much cheaper than it does in Crackcoon, and its 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation follows suit. Colors are decent but washed out, black levels are deep but never quite inky, and contrast is on the high side. Primaries also don't pop all that much, although blood is vibrant and oh so beautifully, bubb-ily red. Detail is relatively crisp but on the soft side overall, with clean edge definition and some fine textures that would look much better if contrast were dialed in more vibrantly. There are also instances of compression blocking and some banding, which doesn't bode well for the proficiency of the encode. It's all fine I suppose, but nothing to get excited about.

Crackcoon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audio may be lossless thanks to Cineverse's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track but that doesn't mean it's any good. The film's sound design may utilize six channels but it doesn't seem to know how to maximize those six channels. Dialogue is clear and intelligible, but air hiss creeps in too often, LFE output bounces between underwhelming and overeager, and the rear speakers do the same. Prioritization is at its own whims, terrific one second, faulty the next, and directionality is imprecise and unsatisfying.

Crackcoon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary - Director Brad Twigg, actress Michelle Bowser and special effects makeup artist Daniel Brooks clearly had a good time and share plenty of laughs about their time in production. I always feel terrible for giving a movie like Crackcoon a bad review when I hear the cast and crew acknowledge it's flaws but love it anyway. I wish I could switch off my brain and just have fun. Sigh.

• Behind the Scenes (HD, 8 minutes) - Interviews with the cast and filmmakers.

• Crackcoon Crack Ups (HD, 3 minutes) - Bloopers and outtakes.

Crackcoon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If Crackcoon stuck with its titular mammal, it would be better for it. Unfortunately, we have to endure a dozen victims that just aren't funny. Cineverse's Blu-ray isn't much better, with adequate video, problematic audio, and decent extras. Skip!