An Amish Murder review: Neve Campbell plays a cop

An Amish Murder stars Neve Campbell as a small town chief of police. She was uniquely qualified for the job because she’d grown up Amish in the town and left her community years ago. She went away and came back later as a police officer. Her family still lived in the area, but none of the Amish were supposed to speak to her. She’d been shunned when she left.

As I watched An Amish Murder, I thought, wow, Neve Campbell really looks good. When it was over, I learned it was originally released in 2013 as a Lifetime Movie. That explains why she looked 10 years younger than the last time I saw her. She was 10 years younger! The movie is available now on Hulu and Prime as well as Lifetime. I saw it promoted on Hulu and gave it a watch on the basis of the woman in the lead role.

The plot revolves around two murders in the small town. They were young girls who were murdered exactly like a serial killer who had been there years before and then vanished. Kate Burkholder (Neve Campbell) thinks the return of the serial killer might be connected to a secret she’s hiding about why she left her community and family years ago.

Mayor Brock (Duane Murray) doesn’t trust her to do the investigation. She deals with sexism from everyone in the police department except the wonderful dispatcher Mona (Linda Kash). Sheriff Detrick (C. Thomas Howell) brings his equally sexist offer to help to her.

The mayor asks for help from the state and they send in a profiler, John Tomasetti (Noam Jenkins). He’s brash and annoying. He’s also good at his job and attractive. There’s some chemistry between Kate and John, even though she resents the fact that he’s on the case.

Speaking of chemistry, the man Kate was in love with before she left the Amish community, Lucas (Jilon VanOver) is still there and can still ignite heat.

Being shunned by the Amish means they can’t talk to you. So they go through a crazy charade of using a second person to repeat everything that’s said so it doesn’t come from Kate’s mouth. Her brother, Jacob Burkholder (Christian Campbell), does talk to her face to face and helps her deal with the secrets from her past.

Being a Lifetime movie from 2013 also means that when Kate is in peril from the serial killer, she is rescued by a man instead of saving herself like any self-respecting chief of police would do. Some things have improved in the last few years on Lifetime. Women don’t always need to be saved by a man.

I enjoyed the film despite its flaws. Neve Campbell was excellent, the costumes and settings with horses and buggies filling the streets looked great, the occasional bits of dialog in German were fun. If you are the kind of person who presses “Play” every time you see the name Neve Campbell, you’ll probably enjoy this one, too.