Netflix Instant Play Picks of the Moment: Cropsey (2009)

Monday, March 10, 2014

Cropsey (2009)

I'm not sure whether Cropsey is entirely successful as a documentary—but as an evocation of some of the most striking features of post-Blair Witch Project horror, it manages to settle into one's consciousness like X-Files Black Oil. That's not to say that its basic "documentary" premise isn't compelling: Staten Island filmmakers/residents explore an urban legend from their childhood involving accounts of child disappearances and the potential link to a local home for developmentally disabled children. The disappearances occurred, the hospital was a snakepit—Geraldo Rivera earned his place in TV journalism history by exposing it back in the early 1970s—and an appropriately creepy suspect was apprehended and convicted; and the film does a good job of exploring the uneasy intersection between the anxious desire to uncover mysteries and the flights of imagination needed to try.

However, what stays with me most are the ghostly, straight-to-tape visuals (Rivera's foremost, his cameraman's bright lights smearing across the darkened frame to catch glimpses of the hospital's miserable inmates cowering under lavatory sinks, huddled in corners) and the overall mood of a dream remembered—as both dream and memory wander, circle closer, then end in uncertainty. Again, while the film explores an idea—the limits of understanding—it does so by evoking the shaky-cam grainy aesthetic of "found-footage" horror films. I'm not sure if the filmmakers deliver an entirely ethical film, but it's invaluable as a confrontation with our desire to see horror at odds with our dread of feeling terror. The former entertains, in a sudden-drop-dizzy kind of way, but the latter—ah, that's Edmund Burke territory, the most sublime feeling, the one that tosses us back a few dozen millennia and lets us peer into the cave where we're not the only ones hiding in the corner: Something's in there with us. And it's Something that we may have made, but it lives on its own now, and little movies like Cropsey swing the light bar and give us a glimpse of what it might be.

It is with some hesitation that I provide a link to Geraldo Rivera's 1972 Eyewitness News piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbiYJkiX-Dg

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T.V. Party

•Eerie, Indiana: A short-lived, early-'90s older kid show about a town situated somewhere between The Twilight Zone and The Addams Family.

•The IT Crowd (series 1): A British series that feels a little like Scrubs—if that show were set in the basement of a corporate headquarters, where an I.T. staff answers the phone with an automatic "Have you tried turning it off and on?" while dealing with Monty-Pythonesque catastrophes. And oh yeah: It's funnier than Scrubs, with the added comedy bonus of British accents.

•Thriller: Not as well-known as its contemporary, The Twilight Zone, this 1960-62 series began as "thrillers" and moved into territory more closely associated with the horror comics of the '50s than the cooly observed socio-psychological parables that Rod Serling favored. Still, as with Zone, top-notch writers pitched in: Robert (Psycho) Bloch, Cornell Woolrich, August Derleth, Charles Beaumont. And of course there's the usual early-'60s lineup of hey-look-who-it-is actors, including Mary Tyler Moore, Victor Buono, Warren Oates, John Carradine, and the ubiquitous William Shatner. Great music, too--plus, you get the King, Boris Karloff, as the host. (I'd suggest you mix these up with episodes of The Andy Griffith Show for a taste of both sides of the pre-counterculture '60s.)

•Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ... : If The Beatles were still together when John was killed, they could have asked Elvis Costello to join them. Just listen to any number of the songs on Imperial Bedroom—such as "Beyond Belief," as full of slippery rhythms and winking lyrics as any Abbey Road tune. Elvis knows—and loves—music, and his Sundance Channel series gives him a chance to straight-up interview, goof around with—and best of all—perform with some stellar guests, including Smokey Robinson, Rufus Wainwright, Elton John, Lou Reed, and Bill Clinton(?). Season two, not yet on Instant Play, includes Nick Lowe, Lyle Lovett, and Bruce Springsteen. But regardless of the guest, the real fun is watching—and listening to—the puckish Elvis enjoying himself immensely, happy to share the stage with the kind of musicians he loves—which is just about every kind. His enthusiasm is infectious in what may be TV's best music-talk show since—well, maybe the kind of things MTV and VH-1 used to do when they were about music, a decade or so ago.

About This Site

I've been a Netflix subscriber since 1999, and since then the opportunities for instant streaming have multiplied dramatically. But to narrow the playing field, I'm going to stick with titles that are Netflix-ready—although most of these certainly can be found elsewhere. The picks are recommendations, not "reviews"; my hope is that the titles are new to you—or ones that you've seen before and I can persuade you to revisit. In any case, I hope that, for the moment, these picks make you as happy as I am when something new or an old friend pops up on the Watch Instantly lineup.

Note: Netflix Instant Play Picks of the Moment is not affiliated with or endorsed by Netflix, which you should get right now, right HERE.

(And a special thanks to Roger Ebert, rest his soul, who Tweeted this site and added mightily to my Followers. You should also go get Ebert, right now, right HERE.)