Cropsey
Jul 23 - Jul 24, 2010
(Joshua Zeman, Barbara Bramcaccio, USA, 2009, Digi-Beta, 84 min)
Screenwriter (Zoo) and The Stranger associate editor Charles Mudede will introduce the Friday, 11pm screening
Have you ever wondered the true origins of “boogeyman” tales told to you as a child?
Growing up in Staten Island, NY, documentarians Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio always heard stories of Cropsey, the escaped mental health inmate that supposedly abducted and murdered neighborhood children. These stories were the things of campfire circles and sleepovers. But then in the summer of 1987, Jennifer Schweiger, a 13 year-old girl with Down syndrome, disappeared.
In this unsettling, balanced, and somewhat ambiguous documentary, the filmmakers explore Jennifer’s case as well as four additional abducted children that may be linked to the crime. Did the community convict the wrong person, or did real-life boogeyman Andre Rand actually commit these horrible crimes? These questions and many more are addressed in this creepy and disturbing journey into the underbelly of a forgotten borough. Reality can sometimes be much more terrifying than any urban legend.
“Cropsey can be seen as The Blair Witch Project by way of Zodiac and Capturing the Friedmans.” —Brandon Harris, Filmmaker Magazine
“Intelligent, profound and unsettling…Audiences will walk out of their theaters, get in their cars and check on their kids, not necessarily in that order.” —John Anderson, Variety
“A chilling horror documentary.” —Roger Ebert
Watch the trailer:
