Amish Witches - The True Story of Holmes County (2016)

Spooktober Challenge 2025

Premise: A film crew led by offbrand Mary Elizabeth Winstead (seriously, it’s like if you ask any ai crap to generate a picture of her, you’d get this lady. it’s uncanny) are going to record a documentary about the amish, and more specifically about women living in an amish village. Very early in the movie we are introduced to the concept of “bruja”, which to the amish (we’re told) means “witch”. They pronounce it “brajah” so yeah anytime anyone said that word it made me laugh a little because i’m very dumb. Anyhoo - a shunned brujah dies, she doesn’t get the proper kind of burial, witchy/spooky stuff starts happening and it is all conveniently recorded on camera.
Under 90 minutes? Yeah!
Do they say the title? No, but honestly I think it’d be asking too much in this very specific case.

One sentence review:

Okay, more: Yeaaah, you know exactly what you are in for when a found footage movie makes a point of giving you a very somber intro caption going “this is the unedited footage” and then they have a soundtrack, different cuts to show camera angles and all that. Basically, it’s a lifetime (literally, yes, what here we call “peli de tarde”) movie with a shaky cam and a quirky (haha those amish) setting. It also is not helped by the fact that the two main amish women we focus on are basically dopplegangers (that’s what you get when they’re both ginger ladies wearing exactly the same clothes, like the creepy twins on the shining but more conservative). There are some fun ideas here and there but it is not great. Too bad.
A simple way to improve it: maybe cast two ladies that do not look exactly the same in your movie. Or have some fun scenes with a dog, i don’t know.

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