Best movie of this year hands down!

A lot of fun.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

One thing I like about this film... and that I don't like... is that it opens the way to the next step in the story. Unfortunately, the film does not provide an avenue for the step to be taken. It didn't move forward fast enough and left the juicy bits for us to imagine. Feels like perhaps there was not the will or the money needed to take the story to the final conclusion. The dissection of his psychological profile. As made clear in the movie, he is very affected by his experience at Willowbrook (and his mother's experience in care) why not look at what happened at Willowbrook because he probably started there and what was Willowbrook's official or unofficial means of disposing of the deceased patients? Were there many unexplained accidents while he was there? Who did he work with and then have contact with or visit on Staten Island after Willowbrook shutdown? But mainly, what did Willowbrook do with the deceased patients in their care? and where was his mother buried? How could he have recreated those circumstances on Staten Island? Plus, he likely knew of ways to get into parts of Willowbrook that seem totally unaccessible to folks unaware of what it is like to be homeless. Take the camera in there, not just superficially look over the grounds please. There were furnaces and other places on those grounds that would naturally be a place he would have known about which could very well be buried in ruins now and that's what I needed to see- more effort.

Cropsey doesn't work. The parade of witnesses and their stories are all befuddling; The film-makers haven't done their job which was to suss out (for the viewer) which of the hordes are the most trustworthy, not to get every single variant story thread (via every person willing to talk on camera) onto the screen. Nobody seems to have the slightest objectivity.It assembles into an incoherent blame narrative that doesn't even establish why Rand was captured in the first place. The trail of evidence implicating Rand is just not good enough. If Rand was arrested for some actual culpability, the film-makers have done a disservice to the community by leaving it out.In the end these people and the convoluted story they weave, just serve to persuade me that Andre Rand is a patsy. A bunch of impressionable bourgeoisie who seem to have no idea that they are capable of projecting their fears onto to a total cipher & scapegoat; and then are terrified by the result. When society is almost done with you, there's still one role they have waiting; designated victim... and a run though the persecution complex.Session 9 also took a real disturbing location/ruin and also produced a muddled result, by fictionalizing the narrative.

I wasn't very thrilled by this movie at all. The directors' goal was to prove that there wasn't an urban myth around the "Cropsey" tale at all, but in fact, the tale supposedly really happened. The thing is, the Cropsey legend doesn't have anything to do with a mental ward or a "dumping ground" for mentally-handicapped people at all. It was a camp story about a possible madman who worked in a summer camp, seeking payback for an atrocity done to him. This tale didn't have anything to do with the Cropsey tale.The movie looks more into how we treat possible who MIGHT BE the killer of a young girl (and 4 others). The sister of the supposed-killer in the movie had it right all along (when she was speaking with the two directors of this documentary: "I feel that my brother is just manipulating you." In other words, he's leading people through some maze of a game that doesn't explain any of his motives or whether or not he really even did anything with the missing girl in question, and hardly any mention is made of the other four cases he might have caused.This review is pretty vague about what happened in the documentary altogether, but from what I saw, my suggestion is don't bother watching it. I wasn't creeped out by anything in this movie (OK, well, I hardly get creeped out on most occasions, but here especially). The story ran dry, as the documentary did. I have to note the obvious ripoff score of Halloween as the "main theme song," too. Not worth it. Go re-rent Silence of the Lambs or something.

This film held my interest, and was solidly creepy in terms of the atmosphere it created. Unfortunately, it hovers in the uncomfortable space between a documentary and a fictitious film.Cropsey tells the stories of five children, many of them developmentally disabled, who disappeared from Staten Island in the late 70s and 80s. While the remains of one were found, the others remain missing until this day.The movie makers attempt to uncover a seedy and tragic underbelly of Staten Island, revealing its past in the form of unsanitary and inhumane mental institutions, such as the notorious Willowbrook Institute, and suggest that the abandoned patients had formed an underground society of sorts beneath the foundations of an abandoned building (which may or may not even be Willowbrook). It is suggested that these people are connected with the disappearances of the children, though no exact evidence is given. It seems these people, who are never seen (except in footage from a Geraldo Rivera expose) but only talked about, serve as scapegoats and freaks for the filmmakers and viewers alike, and this discrimination is ultimately one of the more chilling aspects to the film. There are some references made to the tragedy of the sub-human conditions in which these patients were forced to live, but the film keeps coming back to the idea that the mentally ill are somehow people to be feared.There's also the obligatory mention made of a "Satanic cult," but that subplot never really goes anywhere. The main suspect, one Andre Rand, who has been in prison for these crimes without, it seems, solid evidence other than his weirdness, is an easy villain, and while some of the people interviewed are not willing to believe his guilt, many are, including, it seems, the filmmakers.Overall, Cropsey does little to uncover any truth about the legends or the missing children. To its credit, the film owns up to this in the end, saying that urban legends, with their manifold versions, are not things that can easily be determined as true or untrue. The film stays exactly in the place it started, offering little breakthroughs or even possibilities. The belief in Rand's guilt seems present from the outset, and little is done to explore any alternatives.The one good thing this film does, perhaps unintentionally, is bring to light the mob mentality and the simultaneous repulsion to and interest in the sensationalism of the crimes seen in the Staten Island locals. Interviews with them show a shocking lack of critical thought on the matter, and a willingness to believe the most "us-vs-them" version of possible events.I'd recommend this movie, but caution viewers not to take it literally, and to actively think about what they are being shown.