Watched: Cropsey

Pretty effective documentary. Hilarious Staten Island accents aside, the film has a lot of the look and feel of a horror movie (I swear the soundtrack is eerily similar to The Exorcist's and some of the shots are straight up Blair Witch Project). It also has the added twist of being true. The story starts out exploring the "Cropsey" urban legend, then works its way through the disappearances and investigations of the five children attributed to "drifter/pervert/weirdo" Andre Rand to the strange rumors of cult activity and devil worshiping on Staten Island and their connections to the kidnappings/murders.

Between the gruesome footage from Geraldo Rivera's report on Willowbrook's (the mental institution whose forced closing and later, use by itinerants and former patients as a home in the subterranean tunnels plays an important role in the kidnappings) complete lack of civil or humane treatment of its patients and the weirdness of Andre Rand's letters to the filmmakers; the whole things is totally effective. I'm not kidding about the Rivera footage by the way, it's pretty fucking upsetting. These people were just... thrown in this place to disappear, essentially. Also, I think it's interesting the way they frame the doc as an investigation so that the deeper the filmmakers get into the stories, the less everything makes sense. They leave the film fairly open-ended, which as they note in their final voiceover, is the way most urban legends go. Also, it was probably not a good idea for me to watch this at 3 AM by myself.