****REPOSTED FROM THE LATE, LATE SHOW WITH NEW EDITS/COMMENTS****
I've never seen a movie that was so clearly the director's attempt to address their childhood boogeyman. I spot this on Netflix streaming on occasion, and even now that I've watched it three or four times, the movie is still a fascinating and occasionally chilling look at a legend that's managed to grow into a local boggart.
Thinking back to my own childhood, there were three major events that changed my life, and all before I was 10: the Challenger disaster, the beginnings of the Night Stalker slayings in Los Angeles, and being a bystander in what I believe now to be a kidnapping attempt on a boy who lived in my neighborhood. These were the things that scared me badly as a kid. During the Night Stalker's reign of terror in Los Angeles, and for more than a year later, I would run, full tilt between my home and my best friend's house, only two doors down, if I left one for the other after it was dark. I'm not sure I ever told anyone about what I think was a kidnapping attempt, although I know some of my friends and I talked about it a few times, strained "what if?" type conversations none of us really wanted to have. Maybe one of them told their moms. I know I never said a word and I think I didn't talk about it because talking about it made it real. Sometimes I dreamed about being kidnapped, like that kid from Diff'rent Strokes, but other times it was terrifying.
Richard Ramirez was my own personal boogeyman as a child and even as an adult. To this day, if I happen across his image somewhere, or if I watch documentaries about him, it freaks me out beyond rational measure. While I wasn't exactly in Ramirez' victim profile, and his work wasn't done all that close to where I lived in Southern California, his actions forever changed the way I looked at the world around me. For Barbara Branaccio and Joshua Zeman, Cropsey is their way of confronting the man who haunted their childhood and changed the way they looked at the world around them. I have to admire their courage in that, because having looked at my own childhood fears, I realize how hard that confrontation would have to have been.
I don't talk about a lot of documentaries, because I usually end up watching them in class or when I'm stuck for something more entertaining, but this was… awesome. Considering the way that this is one of those few situations wherein real life reflects a horror film: a former mental patient who survives the closure of his ward begins lurking around a quiet urban neighborhood, kidnapping children he sees as physically, mentally, or emotionally impaired, this is one documentary that can hold its own in the entertainment department. I've certainly seen horror films that weren't as scary as what I saw here.
Now, it's obvious that these two have seen some horror films in the past: The Blair Witch Project comes immediately to mind. The camera work throughout involves scenery and cinematography that I've seen in the horror genre, to include Blair Witch and the final scenes, provided they're scripted and not "found footage," are very Blair inspired. They may have copycatted a bit, but these guys did it right.
