writing screenplays. “And I think the only way we’ll ever know the truth is if he tells us, which was our goal.” (He and Ms. Brancaccio never did get an on-camera interview with Mr. Rand, although he communicated with them by letter from prison in Ossining, N.Y., proclaiming his innocence.)
Mr. Rand had, after all, become the real-life Cropsey of nightmares — the fictional drooling, child-napping maniac — on the grounds of Willowbrook, the institution where he once worked. Only one of the five children whose disappearances are addressed in the movie was ever found: 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger, a girl with Down syndrome, whose body was unearthed in 1987. (Mr. Rand was convicted of her kidnapping.) The others simply vanished. While there was never any physical evidence against Mr. Rand, the filmmakers do not suggest he is innocent. But they became fascinated with the way stories develop, evolve and, perhaps, dictate reality.
Mr. Zeman and Ms. Brancaccio, a deputy commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration, have found supporters of their film. “I think it’s done very well, and I think it tells the truth,” said Donna Cutugno, a Staten Islander who founded the volunteer search group Friends of Jennifer for Missing Children during the Schweiger case. “We still have those other missing children. The boogeyman wasn’t a myth.”
There are also critics. The brothers of Holly Ann Hughes, the second girl Mr. Rand is convicted of kidnapping, are boycotting the movie and are opposed to its screening at the College of Staten Island.
Reached by phone, Sean Hughes said he had not seen the film and did not want to make a statement but made reference to a “Blair Witch”-style sensationalism he thought the film was trying to generate. It’s a perception abetted by horror fans online, who have found in “Cropsey” a documentary all their own.
“I think it’s ‘Blair Witch’ backwards,” Devin Faraci, a writer for the horror Web site
chud.com, said via e- mail. “You create a scenario where people assume it’s fake, because we’ve seen so many faux docs/found- footage films in the horror genre, and then you blow their minds with ‘It’s all true!!!’ ” Mr. Faraci’s problem with the film, echoed elsewhere online, is that there’s no “payoff” or “money shot” — no easy resolution — which is somewhat like complaining that there are no space aliens in “Robin Hood.” The appeal of “Cropsey” to a horror audience has left the filmmakers slightly chagrined.
“We sat with this family when no one else showed up in court,” Ms. Brancaccio said, referring to the prolonged pretrial motions that preceded Mr. Rand’s conviction for the Hughes kidnapping. “So they’ve seen us several times a year for the last 10 years. They know there’s no malice here. I don’t think they want to bring it back up, but there’s nothing happening here in this film that takes away from their loss.”
Ms. Cutugno, who attended the “Cropsey” premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, agreed. “I never got the reason they don’t want it shown at Willowbrook,” she said of the Hughes family. “Jennifer was found there. The story began there. Andre Rand lived there. It’s not tall tales, it’s truth. Jennifer should be honored and remembered, and maybe some of the other kids in time can be found also. Never give up.”
The investigation they undertook, Ms. Brancaccio said, was like “peeling an onion,” as one interviewee led to another, and each person provided another version of the Rand tale. What’s reflected in the film is a specific time and a mood of fear that prevailed in the late ’80s. “The kids’ urban legends were about the escaped mental patients who lived in the woods with a hook for a hand,” Mr. Zeman said. “But the adult urban
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