AmericanaMovies like Americana
- Key Features:
- Black market, Small town, Outcasts, Violence-high, Crime, Historical artifact, Montana, Intertwined lives, Psychological tension, Survival, Desperation
- Tone:
- serious, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Fans of crime dramas, Viewers interested in Native American themes, Those who appreciate dark and gritty narratives, Audiences seeking suspenseful films
- Emotional Arc:
- Antagonism → Conflict → Violence
Americana

When a rare Lakota Ghost Shirt falls into the black market in a small town in South Dakota, the lives of local outsiders and outcasts violently intertwine.
Americana
A former slave who arrives in Yellowstone City, Montana, a desolate former boomtown now on the decline, looking for a place to call home. On that same day, a local prospector discovers gold - and is murdered.

When a young rancher crosses paths with a Lakota girl from a nearby reservation, her mysterious disappearance sparks a search that uncovers a harrowing past and hints at a dire future.

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.

For years, Ollie has illicitly helped the struggling residents of her North Dakota oil boomtown access Canadian health care and medication. When the authorities catch on, she plans to abandon her crusade, only to be dragged in even deeper after a desperate plea for help from her sister.

The story throws Elvis impersonators, Indians, modern cowboys, a 6-foot-tall blond assassin, a frat boy, a corrupt sheriff and a prostitute into a chase for a priceless American Indian artifact stolen during a poker game at an Indian casino

Deputy Langley tracks a kidnapped girl to an abandoned ghost town. However, the town is not abandoned, but haunted by the spirits of an outlaw, Devlin, and his gang, who hold the equally deceased townspeople hostage until the outlaws can be killed by a lawman.

While investigating police corruption in his department, undercover cop Buster McHenry is forced to participate in a heist, leading to innocent casualties and the theft of an ancient Lakota tribal spear. After McHenry ends up severely wounded, he is taken in by Native American Hank Storm, who is out to recover the spear and avenge the death of a loved one in the heist.

A small-town Oregon teacher and her brother, the local sheriff, discover a young student is harbouring a dangerous secret that could have frightening consequences.

It is 1879 in the Dakota Territories, a band of men who set out to find and recover a family of settlers that has mysteriously vanished from their home. Expecting the offenders to be a band of fierce natives, but they soon discover that the real enemy stalks them from below.

On the run after committing murder, an accountant encounters a strange Native American man who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.

A minor train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a mystery involving the town's reclusive bank clerk.

Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan. He's going to hire two thugs to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. It's going to be a snap and nobody's going to get hurt... until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge, a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant - investigator who'll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom... you betcha!

A group of friends move into a vacation home with a sinister past in Fall River, Massachusetts. Suspicious of the home's owner, Taryn feels a strong connection to the house and finds herself at the center of one of the most deadly poltergeists in American history.

Sue Ann is a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own.

When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.

New Mexico Territory, 1880. Rio Cutler and his older sister Sara must abandon their home after an unfortunate event happens. In their desperate flee to Santa Fe, they cross paths with the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid and his gang, who are ruthlessly pursued by a posse led by Sheriff Pat Garret.

A family moves to a small California town where they plan on starting a new life running a long-abandoned funeral home. The locals fear the place, suspected to be on haunted ground.

In 1859, families discover the lure of the Old West as they settle in territories from Wyoming to Kansas. Meanwhile, a gruff cowboy finds himself on the run with a prostitute and a young boy after killing a fellow gunman.

In a small Midwestern town, a deadly annual ritual unfolds when the mythical nightmare, Sawtooth Jack, rises from the cornfields and challenges the town’s teenage boys in a bloody battle of survival.

A simple yet proud rancher conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to participate.

Two quirky, cynical teenaged girls try to figure out what to do with their lives after high school graduation. After they play a prank on an eccentric, middle aged record collector, one of them befriends him, which causes a rift in the girls’ friendship.

Set against the turbulent backdrop of 1870s Montana, in the moments before the execution of Isaac Broadway, he gives his estranged son, Henry, an impossible task: murder the man who framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. Intent on fulfilling his promise, Henry travels to the remote town of Trinity, where an unexpected turn of events traps him in town and leaves him caught between Gabriel Dove, the town’s upstanding new sheriff, and a mysterious figure named St. Christopher.

An aging, booze-addled father takes a trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim what he believes to be a million-dollar sweepstakes prize.

Craig, a young boy living in a small town befriends an older, reclusive billionaire, Mr. Harrigan. The two form a bond over books and an iPhone, but when the man passes away the boy discovers that not everything dead is gone.

An FBI agent teams with the town's veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation.

The survival instincts of a road-tripping family are put to the test when they have no other choice but to stay the night at a remote homestead.

When six friends fly off on a weekend getaway and are suddenly plagued by engine trouble, they're forced to land on a remote island. Looking for shelter, they're grateful to encounter Ma and Pa and their children - an eccentric family living in the island's backwoods. But what begins as simple hospitality turns into a terrifying race for survival as the friends start disappearing one by one ... and turning up dead.

A demonic leprechaun terrorizes a group of young people whom he believes stole his gold.

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.

A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.

Portland, Oregon, 1971. Bob Hughes is the charismatic leader of a peculiar quartet, formed by his wife, Dianne, and another couple, Rick and Nadine, who skillfully steal from drugstores and hospital medicine cabinets in order to appease their insatiable need for drugs. But neither fun nor luck last forever.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

Two brothers cannot overcome their opposite perceptions of life. One brother sees and feels bad in everyone and everything, subsequently he is violent, antisocial and unable to appreciate or enjoy the good things which his brother desperately tries to point out to him.

A young boy has lost his mother and is losing touch with his father and the world around him. Then he meets Hesher who manages to make his life even more chaotic.

A reporter unearths an urban legend about a home being constructed from rooms where horrific tragedies have occurred.

Frustrated with her mundane life, a Tokyo office worker becomes obsessed with a fictional movie that she mistakes for a documentary. Fixating on a scene where stolen cash is buried in North Dakota, she travels to America to find it.

Lizzy is a tough, resourceful frontierswoman settling a remote stretch of land on the 19th-century American frontier. Isolated from civilization in a desolate wilderness where the wind never stops howling, she begins to sense a sinister presence that seems to be borne of the land itself, and when a newlywed couple arrive at a nearby homestead, their presence amplifies Lizzy's fears, setting into motion a shocking chain of events.

American Movie documents the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, American Movie is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man's quest for the American Dream.

The construction of the Great Western Railroad creates heavy conflict between the railway company and neighboring Indian tribes. Worse, criminal gang leader Santer sets his eyes on a gold mine located on holy Indian land and influences the construction supervisor to re-rout the planned railroad straight through Apache land. Old Shatterhand, who works as a measurement technician, discovers the evil plan and searches contact with the Apaches in an effort to avert war.

In Oklahoma, Agnes, a lonely waitress living in an isolated and dilapidated roadside motel, meets Peter, a quiet and mysterious man with whom she establishes a peculiar relationship.

Follow the 10-year reunion of the Deadwood camp to celebrate South Dakota's statehood. Former rivalries are reignited, alliances are tested and old wounds are reopened, as all are left to navigate the inevitable changes that modernity and time have wrought.

John Russell, disdained by his "respectable" fellow stagecoach passengers because he was raised by Indians, becomes their only hope for survival when they are set upon by outlaws.

A frustrated, angry teenage girl awakens something in the woods when she naively performs an occult ritual to invoke a witch to kill her mother.

When 11-year-old Gitty discovers that her father, Abe, a good and beloved farmer, is holding a wealthy man hostage in their abandoned silo in order to save their suffering farm, she befriends the captive in secret. As the truth unfolds about who he is and what will happen if he escapes, Gitty chooses to confront the thin line between reality and fiction.

A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago. After gunning down three gunmen who tried to kill him, the townsfolk decide to hire the Stranger to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

When a possessed pair of jeans begins to kill the staff of a trendy clothing store, it is up to Libby, an idealistic young salesclerk, to stop its bloody rampage.

A family of Irish immigrants adjusts to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

A small town is shaken by a series of ominous killings in the days leading up to a heated mayoral election.

Troy and his young transgender son Joe are on the run from his conservative mother in the Montana wilderness, with a detective in hot pursuit.

Rollins' gang wants to grab land by inciting the settlers in a war against the Indians but Winnetou and Old Shatterhand try to keep the peace, until Rollins frames Winnetou up for the murder of Jicarilla Chief's son.

Off the coast of North America, locals simultaneously fight a zombie epidemic while hoping for a cure to revert their undead relatives back to normal.

A young grandmother in a small Pennsylvania town raises her daughter's child after the girl disappears. All the while, a desperate search for her continues.

A man imprisons his estranged junkie friend in an isolated cabin in the boonies of San Diego to force him through a week of sobriety, but the events of that week are being mysteriously manipulated.

Three inner-city losers plan a robbery of a valuable coin in a seedy second-hand junk shop.

After a young man is murdered, his spirit stays behind to warn his lover of impending danger, with the help of a reluctant psychic.

Following a car accident, which kills her mother, 17-year-old Ida moves in with her estranged aunt and her aunt’s grown sons. The home is filled with physical tenderness and love, but outside of the home, the family leads a violent and criminal life.

A young woman struggles to defend her Sámi heritage in a world where xenophobia is on the rise, climate change is threatening reindeer herding, and young people choose suicide in the face of collective desperation.

Theresa, a haunted young woman spiraling in the wake of profound loss, is torn between her fractured emotional state and the reality-altering effects of a potent cannabinoid drug.

The eclectic residents of a small, picturesque island town must navigate a sensational murder and the discovery of a million dollars, leading to a series of increasingly bad decisions which upend the once-peaceful community.

Four friends on their way to Coachella stop off in Los Angeles to tour true-crime occult sites, only to encounter a mysterious young runaway who puts them on a terrifying path to ultimate horror.

A pistol-packing teen meets an unstable rebel and a cocaine-snorting drifter as she hitchhikes her way out West.

When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

A young mixed-blood FBI agent is assigned to work with a cynical veteran investigator on a murder on a poverty-stricken Sioux reservation.

A family from the city decide to spend a weekend away at a friend's country farmhouse. But a fluke accident sets off a chain of events that alters their lives forever and conjures up the ferocious spirit of the Wendigo.

A pioneering family fights back against a gang of vicious outlaws that is terrorizing them on their newly-built farm on the plains of Montana.

Set in the underworld of debt-collecting, homegrown hustler Peg Dahl will do anything to escape Buffalo, NY.

Set in the midst of the 2009 housing crisis, the life of Cassie Fowler, a single mother and struggling realtor, goes off the rails when she witnesses a murder.

Vacationing on historic Nantucket Island, a teenage mystery writer and her friends must outwit two scheming thieves to solve the secret behind a legendary ghost story.

When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.

In the grim Alaskan winter, a naturalist hunts for wolves blamed for killing a local boy, but he soon finds himself swept into a chilling mystery.

A teen and her mother live simply in a home in the woods, spending their time making rock music. A chance encounter with a fellow teen causes her to uncover a connection between her family and witchcraft, which causes a rift with her mother.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie's life changes when Jasper takes his help to dispose of the body of his girlfriend, Laura. He decides to look for the murderer and falls in love with Laura's younger sister.

In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.

What happens when a person decides that life is merely a state of mind? If you're Betty, a small-town waitress and soap opera fan from Fair Oaks, Kansas, you refuse to believe that you can't be with the love of your life just because he doesn't really exist. After all, life is no excuse for not living. Traumatized by a savage event, Betty enters into a fugue state that allows -- even encourages -- her to keep functioning... in a kind of alternate reality.

After the death of their college age son, Anne and Paul Sacchetti relocate to the snowswept New England hamlet of Aylesbury, a sleepy village where all is most certainly not as it seems. When strange sounds and eerie feelings convince Anne that her son's spirit is still with them, they invite an eccentric, New Age couple to help them get to the bottom of the mystery.

Teaming up for the first time for a special episode of a supernatural reality TV show, two rival crews get more then they bargained for when they make physical contact with a ferocious spirit of terrifying power. They must band together before it destroys them all. After 49 killer episodes…this is the true story of what happened on episode 50.

A group of friends emerge from the darkness, bloody and lucky to be alive. Having already lost two friends in the marsh, they break into an empty vacation house to take shelter. Whatever was in the marsh is still after them, but it's not the only thing that wants them dead. Something much worse and more savage lays in wait.

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

In the town of Normal Valley, an eccentric magician named Maestro entertains the local children every day in his spooky mansion. One stormy night, the town's mayor leads a group of angry citizens to the mansion in an attempt to run Maestro out of town.

No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead.

A domineering but charismatic rancher wages a war of intimidation on his brother's new wife and her teen son, until long-hidden secrets come to light.

Strange cravings and hallucinations befall a young couple after seeking shelter in the home of an aging farmer and her peculiar son.

Mike Kendall, a disgraced ex-cop, is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of a road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.

In the menacing inferno of the old North-American West, Liz is a genuine survivor who is hunted by a vengeful preacher for a crime she didn’t commit.

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

Young Native American man Thomas is a nerd in his reservation, wearing oversize glasses and telling everyone stories no-one wants to hear. His parents died in a fire in 1976, and Thomas was saved by Arnold. Arnold soon left his family, and Victor hasn't seen his father for 10 years. When Victor hears Arnold has died, Thomas offers him funding for the trip to get Arnold's remains.

An unlikely friendship unfolds between a young deaf boy, Wesley, and a fugitive criminal who takes refuge in an abandoned barn on the family’s rural North Dakota farm.

The stories of a missing wife, a couple of meth heads and an Elvis impersonator are connected by the items found in a small town's pawn shop.

In 1992, Mercer is desperately trying to rebuild his life and his relationship with his son amidst the turbulent Los Angeles uprising following the Rodney King verdict. Across town, another father and son put their own strained relationship to the test as they plot a dangerous heist to steal catalytic converters, which contain valuable platinum from the factory where Mercer works. As tensions rise and chaos erupts, both families reach their boiling points when their worlds collide.

After witnessing a grotesque murder at a party in her new town, a teenager starts having strange visions and bizarre desires.

A mysterious preacher protects a humble prospector village from a greedy mining company trying to encroach on their land.

Upon receiving a mysterious letter that her mother's grave has been vandalized, Marie travels to the desolate island town where she's buried. Just as she arrives, the island closes for the season, leaving Marie trapped in a nightmare.

Set in the small town of Devil's Gate, North Dakota, the film examines the disappearance of a local woman and her young son. Schull plays an FBI agent who helps the local sheriff search for answers. Partnering with a deputy , they track down the missing woman's husband and find that nothing is as it seems.

After a family tragedy, Chuck Wilson hopes to start a new life in Ashland Falls with his wife Maria and little sister Elizabeth, but he quickly discovers that the town has a dark history of being haunted by a ghostly woman who drives residents to suicide.

Dane ‘Marbles’ Marbeck can see ghosts, thanks to a homemade drug: his late father’s neurological medication mixed with marijuana. Officer Jayson Tagg, a wannabe super-cop on the trail of a serial killer, ends up murdered. So when Marbles’ mum plans to sell the family farm, and the only way of buying the house off her is taking the money offered by Tagg in exchange for his help, Marbles accepts. The unlikely duo of stoner medium and ghost cop struggle to reconcile their differences while they navigate their way through ghouls, perverts, a mysterious hooded figure, and an unexpected shot at love. It becomes clear the only way Marbles and Tagg will solve the case with their souls intact is to confront their deepest regrets and overcome their prejudices.

The uncle of an executed murderess relates four stories of his hometown, Oldfield, to a reporter. In the first, an elderly man pursues a romance with a younger woman, even to the grave and beyond. In the second, a wounded man on the run from creditors is rescued by a backwoods hermit who holds the secret to eternal life. In the third, a glass-eating carny pays the ultimate price for looking for love on the outside. And in the fourth, a group of Civil War soldiers are held captive by a household of orphans with strange intentions for them.

Lifelong best friends, Sam and Jess, are each other’s everything. But when Jess meets a handsome out-of-stater, Landon, Sam begins to fear she’s being cast aside. To make matters worse, a massive corporation - who happens to be Landon’s employer - is threatening the small-town way of life they know and love in Vermont. In order to save her sisterhood and protect the town, Sam will pull out all the stops to keep both Jess’s relationship and the ominous company from developing any further.

A mysterious global blackout yields countless populations to simply vanish, leaving only their clothes and possessions behind. A small handful of survivors band together in a dimly-lit tavern on 7th Street, struggling to combat the apocalyptic horror. Realizing they may in fact be the last people on earth, a dark shadow hones in on them alone.

Set against the backdrop of a decaying Midwestern town, a murder becomes the focal point of three people who work in a doll factory.
