Sara Canning | Through the Shattered Lens

Well, this one is just strange.

Mama’s Little Murderer opens with twenty-something Anthony (Isaac Kragten) being abducted and taken, with a bag over his head, to a random wooded location. Uh-oh, looks like Anthony is in trouble! Suddenly, we flash back to Anthony getting suspended from college because of his fearsome tempter. Then, a few weeks later, Anthony shows up at home where he is upset to discover that his mother, Constance (Sara Canning), is living with her boyfriend, Leo (Ian Kilburn). Anthony is jealous and goes to extremes to try to break up Constance and Leo.

Because of the title, I assumed that this film would be about a mom discovering that her son is a murderer. I also thought that the son would be much younger than he turned out to be. You don’t really refer to a twenty-year old as being “mama’s little anything.” Due to the title, I was expecting this to be a version of The Bad Seed. Instead, it just became a film about a selfish and rather annoying college student who couldn’t accept the fact that his mom was moving on with her life. Anthony went to extremes to try to break up Leo and his mom but, and please forgive the spoiler, he never murdered anyone.

While we’re watching Anthony act like a loser in the past, we’re also watching Constance and Leo trying to deal with him being kidnapped in the present. Now, I will say that there was some suspense as to whether or not Anthony was in on the kidnapping. Or at least, there was initially. But it soon became clear that, while Anthony was guilty of being a very bad son, he was not guilty of setting up his own kidnapping. Indeed, the kidnapping had very little do with his efforts to break up his mother and Leo.

As I watched this movie, I found myself thinking about how much I hated The King of Staten Island. That was the film that featured Pete Davidson as an annoying little jerk who got mad because his mother (Marisa Tomei) was dating a fireman (Bill Burr). My main issue with that film was that everyone seemed to be way too forgiving of Davidson’s character. The same thing happens here. Anthony does some terrible things. He doesn’t even tell his mom the truth about what happened at the college. But, when all of his lies and his schemes are revealed, he just apologizes and everyone’s like, “Oh, okay, that’s cool.” Whereas, in reality, they should have kicked him out of the house and had him committed somewhere.

(Needless to say, it’s never a good sign when a film makes you think about another film that you disliked.)

This was essentially two films in one. One film was about a mentally unstable son. The other film was a standard kidnapping film. Unfortunately, the two films didn’t really go together and neither one felt fully developed. It’s a shame because Sara Canning was likable as Constance and you really did hope that she would find happiness with Leo. It was hard not to feel that both Constance and Leo deserved better than having to deal with Anthony. They should have let the kidnappers keep him.

Amish Abduction tells the story of Annie (Sara Canning) and Jacob (Steve Byers).

As you may have guessed from the title (and the trailer, if you watched it), Annie and Jacob are Amish. They live in a simple home. They dress modestly. They ride around in a buggy. Annie talks about how little she trusts “the English.” They spend a lot of time working in the fields. They appaear to be about as Amish as Amish can be. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Jacob has grown disillusioned with Amish life. He wants to leave the community and live with the English. He’s even purchased a phone! “Look at everything that it can do!” he says in amazement as he stares down at the screen in his palm. He tries to give Annie a phone as well but Annie has no use for it. Not yet, anyways….

However, it turns out that Jacob is not merely suffering from a second Rumspringa. Jacob’s gotten into some serious trouble. He’s been buying whiskey from one of the English, a redneck who likes to wander around in the Pennsylvania wilderness. When the redneck starts acting like a jackass, Jacob kills him. When the police show up at the village and start asking questions, the Amish keep quiet. They want nothing to do with the outside world.

One morning, Annie wakes up and discovers that Jacob has left during the night. He’s abandoned his culture, his religion, and his wife. However, Jacob has taken their son with him. Jacob is willing to go to court and demand custody. Annie will have to leave the village and enter the world of the English in order to save her son from his increasingly demented father.

Ah, the Amish. I have actually lost track of the number of movies that I’ve seen about the Amish. Films about the Amish always emphasize the idea that the Amish are simple people who reject modern technology and still live the way that their ancestors lived back in the very distant past. Inevitably, these movies always have at least one scene where an Amish person is amazed by a television or a radio or a phone.

Of course, the truth is far more complicated. There’s a fascinating documentary called Devil’s Playground, that follows several Amish teens as they go through Rumspringa, which is a time when they can take part in the modern world and decide for themselves whether or not to be baptized into the Amish church or to leave the community. As that documentary demonstrated, just because the Amish don’t take part in much of modern society, that doesn’t mean that they’re ignorant of it. Unfortunately, most films take a far more simplistic (and rather condescending) approach to portraying the Amish.

That said, Amish Abduction is one of the better “Amish” films that I’ve seen recently. That doesn’t necessarily mean that its a 100% accurate but it does mean that, at the very least, it treats its characters as something more than just outsiders to be gawked at. Sara Canning, in particular, gives a good and heartfelt performance as Annie and the film presents her character and her concerns in a fair and even-handed manner. She was particularly strong during one scene in which Annie has a nightmare about what it would like to become one of the English. Amish Abduction may be about the Amish but it’s also about a woman trying to protect the most important thing in her life and who can’t relate to that?