Cropsey

Anybody who has gone on a group camping trip has told a creepy urban legend around the fire, usually involving some guy with a hook and a tendency to harm children in the night. On Staten Island, the predominant urban legend was Cropsey. The fictional yarn told to freak kids out began to seem more like a reality when young children started turning up missing. Directors Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman investigate the story of Andre Rand, a creepy former employee at a decrepit Staten Island mental hospital who used to sleep on a mattress out in the woods. When the hospital (made infamous by Geraldo Rivera when he toured the awful facility) was shut down, it’s believed that homeless people, including Rand, continued to roam the hallways. Rand became chief suspect in the disappearance of children, and the film covers the course of his trial. The movie is fitfully creepy, although the two directors hurt their film a bit with some staged antics that make it seem like they are trying to make the next Blair Witch Project. The story of Rand is scary enough without them trying to create scares in the bowels of an abandoned building