For me, one of the best surprises I came across at last year's Fantastic Fest was Cropsey, a documentary by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio. Given that particular festival is mainly about absurdly unrealistic films, Cropsey ended up having this strange word of mouth around the theater lines. It was inevitable when talking about what someone had already seen at the fest or what they were planning to that you'd hear the phrase, "So Cropsey is good, eh? I thought it was just a mockumentary, not an actual documentary..."

The reason people were confused about what kind of movie Cropsey is had nothing to do with the style of filmmaking. It was entirely because the subject matter of Zeman and Brancaccio's documentary is so uniquely specific, so bothersome and unbelievable that it seems like it's the script for a horror movie. It's not a script, though. There's nothing staged or hoaxy about it at all. Cropsey is an examination of a real boogeyman that still haunts the memories of many Staten Islanders. And boy is it creepy. This film cuts deep in ways scripted horror movies can only dream of.

Here's the synopsis from the film's official site:

"For the kids in their neighborhood, Cropsey was the escaped mental patient who lived in the old abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution, who would come out late at night and snatch children off the streets. Sometimes Cropsey had a hook for a hand, other times he wielded a bloody axe, but it didn't matter, Cropsey was always out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting to get them.

Later as teenagers, the filmmakers assumed Cropsey was just an urban legend: a cautionary tale used to keep them out of those abandoned buildings and stop them from doing all those things that teenagers like to do. That all changed in the summer of 1987 when a 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome, named Jennifer Schweiger, disappeared from their community. That was the summer all the kids from Staten Island discovered that their urban legend was real.

Now as adults Joshua and Barbara have returned to Staten Island to create Cropsey, a feature documentary that delves into the mystery behind Jennifer and four additional missing children. The film also investigates Andre Rand, the real-life boogeyman linked to their disappearances."

Straight out of a horror movie, no? That doesn't even mention Andre Rand's history, the conditions within Willowbrook, or the theories that arose connecting it all. It's an absolutely engrossing story and Zeman and Brancaccio do a stellar job of trying to uncover what it was like growing up in the shadow of such an unbelievable presence and what is still like for the people who were never able to escape it. It's not exploitative in the least, but a very respectful look at the lives of all involved that goes out of its way to separate fact from fiction.

I'm guessing most people haven't had the opportunity to see Cropsey, so I wanted to give everyone a heads up that the film is available On-Demand until August 12th. So if you have Comcast, Time Warner, Cox or Brighthouse as your cable provider, I highly recommend you catch Cropsey before it's too late.