Cropsey

For me, tales of true crime scratch the same emotional itch as horror films. I like getting to the brink of the seedy, taboo, and horrific from the safety of my couch. Cropsey is a fine example of both, and an excellent sleeper documentary that everyone should seek out.

Cropsey is directed by the duo of Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zemen, and is based on an urban legend from, of all places, Staten Island. Since the late 70s, children have been telling tales of Cropsey: an ex-mental patient from the now-closed Willowbrook State School, a home for children with mental retardation. Cropsey was your run-of-the-mill boogeyman who lived in the abandon tunnels of Willowbrook and crept out at night to snatch children who were never seen or heard from again.

The urban legend became real in 1987 when Jennifer Schweiger, a 13-year-old with Down's Syndrom, went missing. Over the next several years, a series of missing-children cases plagued the island, and it wasn't too long before the residents found their boogeyman: a man by the name of Andre Rand, an ex-orderly from the Willowbrook State School.

One of the first documentaries that I ever saw and really enjoyed was Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills. (My love of that film prompted me to check out an earlier film of theirs, Brother's Keeper, which is equally excellent). There are similar themes present here: namely, a society's tendency to catch, package, and brand someone who looks or acts "different" as a much more monstrous being than they really may be. But Brancaccio and Zemen don't stop there; there are twists that make you rethink everything you've just seen, and the film had me guessing for the entire 84 minute runtime (short, but a perfect length for this material).

I haven't said much about the horror elements, and I will leave them to be experienced for yourself. All I will say is that I have a new found respect for Geraldo Rivera, who makes a cameo in some of the most disturbing footage I have seen, and the grainy, 70s-era film stock makes it all that much creepier.

Ps: I've been a New Yorker now for 15 years, and I have no idea how I didn't hear about this case and the trial of Andre Rand. Sadly I think this kind of stuff happens more often than we think.