Film Review: Cropsey | Joshua Zeman & Barbara Brancaccio (2009)

Monday night, I watched a film about the Staten Island urban legend of 'Cropsey.'

This documentary was inspired by the urban legend of Cropsey: an escaped mental patient who lived in the abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution, who came out at nights and snatched away children, for them to never be seen again. It was, at first, seemingly just an urban legend. But in 1987, a twelve-year-old girl with Downs syndrome, named Jennifer Schweiger, disappeared.

A website with more information about the production crew and the making of the film can be found here.

From both the provided tag and the description provided above you probably came into this thinking that you're going to read my review of a horror film.

Sorry, mate. My little trick.

In fact, this is a documentary - a little low-budget, I suspect - which focuses less on the urban legend but more on the real life case of not just Jennifer Schweiger but of five missing children (including her) who disappeared from 1971 to 1987 and of Andre Rand, the "real life Cropsey" who firstly was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison (eligible for parole after 25 years in prison) on the first-degree kidnapping charge of Jennifer Schweiger and then in 2004 he was sentenced again for the kidnapping of Holly Ann Hughes, for a consecutive 25 years to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole next in 2037, by which time he will be 93.

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Me and my girlfriend - who reviewed the film on YouTube - were looking for something to watch Monday night. She had heard good things about the film from Nick Nocturne and so recommended it.

I was dubious. Urban legends are not quite my sphere of interest - I have a little bit of developing fascination but no outright love or interest for them, whereas she loves that sort of stuff - but I agreed to give it a go.

My expectations, suffice to say, were blown out of the water.

This was a fantastic documentary.

We are introduced, firstly, to the subject of Cropsey, but this urban legend isn't really the focus of the film. It's on Andre Rand, and Jennifer Schweiger, and the other missing children (only the body of Schweiger was ever found), and the second 2004 trial of Andre Rand.

What really sets this documentary apart from my expectations was the fact that it was so well-crafted. We have talking heads of acquaintances of Rand, parents of the missing children, the founder of the Friends of Jennifer (at the time of filming, still searching for the bodies of the other missing children), with a professor of folklore at Penn State, with police officers, with Rand's defense attorneys, with retired members of the NYPD. A wide breadth of people is drawn upon.

This is interspliced with archival footage of the 1972 exposé "Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace," from documentary filmmaker Geraldo Rivera. There is other archival footage of the original trial, of the parents of the missing children, of news reports from around the same time period.

Thus, the stories of the original kidnappings and of the present day kidnapping are revealed concurrently within the film. Tied also into this is Staten Island's obsession with the case, of the oral myth of Cropsey, and of the need for catharsis of many of the parents of the missing children.

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I was reminded very strongly of Errol Morris' documentaries: the talking heads. the intersplicing of present-day interviews with archival footage. the close-ups of text (which I didn't mention earlier because it would be a dead giveaway) of letters and newspapers.

More than that, it's the way the entire thing is put together: the kidnapping, the behind-the-face of Andre Rand, and the 2004 trial all unravel together. The past influences the future, the future reflects the past - it's not merely the telling of the story but the way we tell the story, and that the way we tell the story becomes part of the story. The cards and perspectives are laid out for us to see, serving to comment on itself: it's all performance, the documentarians providing little judgement.

The most pointed, obvious presentation of this was when Bob Graham made a remark about a photograph of Andre Rand. I paraphrase, but this is roughly accurate in meaning to the original statement:

"You present the photograph to someone, you say, 'He's a kidnapper of five children.' 'Yeah, yeah, I see it, I see it!' Or you say, this man rescued children from a burning building. 'Yeah, yeah, I see it, I see it!'

It's such a present, obvious influence that I would be very, very surprised if Morris was not a conscious influence on the film.

But this isn't a Morris rip-off. This is still its own film: the directors try and get in touch with Andre Rand to interview him. We see them exploring the abandoned Willowbrook Institution. They get in touch with Rand by correspondence, communicating by letter. It lacks the obsessive, razor-sharp focus on a single thing that demarcates Morris - that's not a critique. That's an observation.

It leans into the true-crime documentary: it is accompanied by an atmospheric, largely piano soundtrack by Alexander Lasarenko. (I found it a little generic.) The narration often goes just a little for the "shlock" documentary:

As kids we never thought we'd learn the real story behind Cropsey, instead Rand was sent to prison and the stories just faded away. But now 20 years later we may get the chance to uncover the truth behind an urban legend, because Andre Rand... is back.

It creates a lot of atmosphere: an exploration of Willowbrook at night. The genuinely startling and horrifying archival footage from Rivera's exposé. The soundtrack and the narration. The raw pain of the parents of the missing children whose bodies still have not been found.

A fantastic film, in short. Not perfect, I don't think - the soundtrack is effective but just not to my taste. The "shlock" (an A&E documentary on Ted Bundy exemplified it: deep-voiced narration about the inevitability of Bundy's evil with plenty of 'scare lines; poorly-lit re-enactments; high piano soundtrack) true-crime-doc elements will be fine for most people but just are not to my taste. From my perspective as a fan of Morris documentaries, I found them jarring and ill-suited next to the rest of the film.

But, again, I have a rather different perspective - for most it seems to have worked just fine. Even so, I can't help but think that had those elements - namely the soundtrack and the "scare lines" in the narration - had been altered and removed, the film would've worked better. But then, I suppose it would've been less of a horror film for that.

I probably dramatize the issue somewhat: the "scare lines" mostly crop up around the early stages of the film. Even so, I found them jarring, and there were moments when I felt the soundtrack was ineffective for what was actually being shown on screen.

It is, I suppose, down to individual taste.

All in all, however, this was a genuinely fantastic documentary which surprised me greatly in its quality. I at some point in the future expect to pick up the special edition DVD, which includes the director's cut which has bonus clips and never-before-seen extended scenes.

Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys urban legends, or true-crime documentaries, or documentaries, or urban legend documentaries.