Ok, so every small town has a story about something scary that kids tell to terrify each other, right? I mean, when we were kids, my friend Danielle and I got a bunch of kids in our apartment complex believing there was a ring of Satan worshipers who kidnapped kids and sacrificed them in the woods by our apartment complex, so this tells you two things. 1. we were demented children, and 2. it's easy to scare kids with scary stories. I was sold a bill of goods about this movie, that it was made by some filmmakers who investigated the legend of "Cropsey," a local legendary killer who supposedly kidnapped kids in their area (Staten Island) and killed the kids and if you go into the woods Cropsey will kill you, so obey your mom and dad, blah blah blah, you get the idea. What no one told me was that this description is actually a load of shit, and what the movie REALLY does is start off with this supposed "legend of Cropsey," and then it takes a sharp right turn into assholeville and moves onto some local cases of kids who actually were abducted and killed or never seen again, and then the filmmakers try to staple these stories together to show that the man accused in these murders must have inspired the legend of Cropsey (which is really stretching things and feels gross and exploitative, since these were real kids with real families who really disappeared, and we're still acting like this is a fun campfire story).
The filmmakers proceed to let this guy (the accused kidnapper/killer) manipulate them through letters, they give him more publicity, they talk to other people who helped search for the missing kids back in the day, one of whom seems really sincere, and one who spins a huge web of horseshit saying that there really is an army of underground Satanic cults but he can't go into detail about them or they will get him. Come on, dude, you're not fooling me, I played the same game when I was ten, and that was many years ago and I like to think I've matured since then. Satanic cults my ass. Here's your 15 minutes of fame. Hope it as worth it.
Anyway, so basically we get to see these filmmakers stumble around, interviewing people whose memories are over 20 years old and thus incredibly rusty, and we get to see a bunch of less than believable testimony offered at trial, and this old man is painted as a serial killer with next to no evidence. I'm not saying he was a good guy, and I'm not saying that he DIDN'T have anything to do with the kidnappings and killings, but I AM saying that there is reasonable doubt up the ass here, and seeing a guy get railroaded with no evidence isn't my idea of fun. And then the movie ends, after having gone nowhere and said nothing for an hour and a half of my life that I will never get back. So no, I wasn't impressed, and I wanted to like this movie, too.
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