4. Cropsey
Site Score: 7, IMDb Score: 2 Overall Score: 9
Directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio
Year: 2009
Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio set out to make a film about one of the most popular urban legends in New York, Staten Island’s Cropsey, a boogeyman who snatches children from the streets and takes them to abandoned houses littered across Staten Island to kill them. What they discovered quickly turned an imaginary boogeyman into a real one, named Andre Rand. Rand was allegedly responsible for the kidnapping and murder of five children, although the jury convicted him of only two of those, Jennifer Schweiger and Holly Ann Hughes. The film received several awards, including 2009 Tribeca’s Grand Jury Prize and IndieWIRE’s 2009 Best Undistributed Film.
