Any element of this documentary could have been interesting on its own. Its problems are of organization, depth of content, and in its representation of its contents.

Cropsey sells itself as an investigation of the history behind a local tall tale or scary story — sort of a Hook Man legend of the New York tri-state area. That could have been really neat. Instead it uses the Cropsey story as a facile metaphor for the story of a convicted child predator who roamed the site of a former mental institution in the 1970s. Again, that itself could have been a good subject. Yet instead of investigating the social circumstances and consequences of the killings — what led to the fellow’s crimes, and what effect those crimes had on the local culture — the filmmakers spent most of their time puttering around Staten Island, conducting inconsequential searches of the institution grounds, writing questionable letters to the convict in question, and making fruitless visits to his prison.

You can tell how young the filmmakers are by the depth of their solipsism. The documentary is almost more about the fact that they’re making a documentary, and the problems and logistics that they face along the way, than it is about its ostensible subject. Guys, I don’t care what brick walls you ran into. None of them are even particularly interesting. And then, what, you stop and shrug the moment the convict decides not to talk to you? What about the actual content of his letters? What can we gather from that? You barely showed it.

We could also have looked at the institution itself, and the culture from which it arose. Why were the conditions so bad there? What was the justification? What promises did the staff make to families? What were the ramifications, in terms of the mental health of its patients? How are the conditions and culture of the institution related to the killer’s emotional and physical circumstances? Now that you’ve thrown all these pieces on the board, how do they fit together?

There are at least three failed explorations in here, any of which I’d have been pleased to hear more about. The most interesting of those is the folklore angle — as evidently the filmmakers recognized, given the documentary’s spin.