Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crazy Fun Park’ on Hulu, Where Aussie Teens Living And Not Find Escape In A Rundown Attraction

It’s a pretty big deal when a show can beat out Bluey, and that’s exactly what Crazy Fun Park (Hulu) did in 2023, winning a Logie Award for excellence in Australian children’s programming. The ten-episode series, created and co-written by Nicholas Verso, brings us into the world of a theme park in a small town far outside Melbourne, where too many teen deaths in an age before more conscious safety regulations led to its eventual closure. It was once a place once full of joy, now closed up, forgotten, and stigmatized. But as two pals on the fringes of their social circle learn, tragedy can lead to discovery, and within the right environment, the bonds of friendship can remain strong even in death.     

CRAZY FUN PARK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A decrepit theme park at night – rides silenced and garish, pockmarked attractions. A man seeking shelter decides on one disused platform, only to run screaming from the park at the sight of three masked figures who seem to simply emerge from the gloom.

The Gist: Chester (Henry Strand) and Mapplethorpe (Stacy Clausen) are the kind of duo every high school has a few of. Utterly inseparable in class and out, they each take a responsibility for the whole. Chester is quiet, artistic, and eager, doing his best to at least try and get them to class on time, while Mapplethorpe is the mouthpiece, a kinetic dynamo of over-the-top theatrics that mask his deeper held feelings. While Chester wonders if people in the big city might take more seriously their dreams of writing and illustrating a graphic novel, Mapplethorpe scoffs at Melbourne. They’ve got everything they need right here in their sleepy small town. And besides, Melbourne doesn’t have Crazy Fun Park.

With it’s cat’s mouth entrance tunnel, stories tall skeleton of a wooden roller coaster, and the detritus of kewpie dolls and carnival shooting games strewn about, Crazy Fun Park is the area’s great hope for building the community that fell on hard times in the 1970s and 80s after safety violations and a series of tragic accidents. Most days, Mapplethorpe and Chester only dare each other to explore the grounds. But it takes the arrival of Violetta (Hanna Ogawa), a new transfer from Melbourne and an amateur photographer of urban ruins, to get them inside. Baba Vanga, the fortune teller machine that somehow still works, beckons. “Are you ready to live dangerously? Are you ready to learn the truth?”

Crazy Fun Park takes a quick and serious turn when events lead to the accidental death of Mapplethorpe as he explores the ruin alone. The community is in shock and Chester is lost in grief and pain and left adrift, so he runs to the place he and his best friend shared. But the park is a much different place at night. In fact, it has an afterlife of its own, with Mapplethorpe as its latest addition. “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” is the title of this first episode. But as Chester learns, it’s also the mantra of those whose souls live on forever inside Crazy Fun Park.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Right away, Crazy Fun Park presents concepts of death, loss, and grief amongst young people. But those admittedly heavy themes are tempered by the excitement of discovery, of being let in on a secret, of engaging with the fantastic, and that’s where the series feels like a demographic precursor to Stranger Things. The Gryphon, a German series based on a popular series of fantasy-horror novels, took that connection even further, depositing its own set of outlier teens in the 1990s with the alternative music soundtrack to boot.

Our Take: The loss of Stacy Clausen’s Mapplethorpe so quickly in the early going of Crazy Fun Park is certainly a shock to the system. Clausen gives him such a spark of unpredictable energy, it’s impossible not to be reminded of similar individuals you’ve known in your own life, always searching for an adventure to make but probably running from some truth at the very same time. And it’s that sense that helps Crazy Fun Park along in its management of loss. Tragedies in some form are inevitable, and entirely possible at any age. And while it acknowledges the gravity of Mapplethorpe’s death, it’s also quick to establish an otherworldliness to the park grounds, a place that’s simultaneously scarred (graffiti: “thanks for visiting DYING at Crazy Fun Park”), spooky, and full of alluring mystery for kids who might not feel like they fit in anywhere else.

We’re most interested in putting names to the unpredictable faces. With such a huge personality as Mapplethorpe had in life, he’s bound to cause as much friction on the astral plane as he did in high school homeroom. Who will he align with inside Crazy Fun Park’s physical and fantastical environs, and how will Chester and Violetta figure into that mix from the mortal side of things? Maintaining a tone that feels respectful as much as it messes with bits of horror and whimsy is already a strength for Crazy Fun Park. It’s intriguing to think of where that tone might lead its main characters, now that the initial shock of loss has worn off.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As Chester finds his way in the dark, the park comes to…well, not life exactly. But it reveals itself to him in ways that would be more traumatizing for a young person dealing with the death of his best friend if the whole experience didn’t suddenly just feel so…mischievous. You know, just like Mapplethorpe was.

Sleeper Star: Like so many shows with disaffected teenagers at its center, the parents, teachers, and school administrators in the lives of Chester, Mapplethorpe, and Violetta are largely background noise in Crazy Fun Park. Left to their own devices, these kids make a world for themselves, and will face the adversity it brings largely on their own.  

Most Pilot-y Line: The fortune teller gave Mapplethorpe a card, one that was not blank like he told Chester and Violetta it was. “Can you surrender that which you most desire?” 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Crazy Fun Park deals with its mature themes straight on and with clarity, and transitions ably into a fantasy-horror tone as it reveals what the escape of an abandoned theme park can truly mean for the individuals it was meant to entertain.  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.