Snallygaster

GINA JENSEN, a pretty college girl, learns that her missing friend was making a documentary about the Amish custom of rumspringa in which teens can sample the modern world before deciding if they want to be baptized into the Amish church. If they choose not to join, they are shunned by their family. While Gina is questioning 18-year-old farm boy ZEKE YODER (the last person to see her friend), a cow gives birth. But something goes horribly wrong: the calf is born deformed, looking as if it was part reptile and part bird. Zeke says it's the work of the devil. He tells her the old timers won't talk about "white magic" -- or the Snallygaster, a hideous monster with wings that has been known to snatch not only livestock, but small children as well. Skeptical, Gina visits the town library to research Snallygaster sightings in the area and discovers a pattern: four missing children, each nineteen years apart. Each coinciding with reports of a strange creature being seen around the same time in April. One of those who disappeared was the son of Zeke's grandparents. Gina goes to see Zeke, but on the way she nearly hits a young girl on a bike when she tries to pass a horse-and-buggy being ridden by an old Amish man, JOSEPH HAAS. Shaken and scared, Gina drives off while Haas appears to be putting a hex on her. Zeke explains to her that his grandparent's son was retarded and may have gotten lost after wandering into the woods. Gina asks if it had anything to do with the Snallygaster, but he halfheartedly scoffs at the notion. He tells Gina that he will probably end rumspringa soon and join the Amish church. When she says she'd like to know more about this rite of passage, he invites her to their big rave so she can see for herself what it's all about. Cut to: Gina and Zeke boarding a Party Bus en route to a remote location where hundreds of Amish teenagers on rumspringa break, join normal kids to do drugs and hook up. On the charter bus, are RANDALL (a neo-Nazi in disguise), JEREMY (an African-American heading to Harvard), two PENN DUTCH STONERS and a couple of hot chicks, VIVIAN and BETH (Amish). It's a microcosm-on-wheels of all that is good and bad in modern youth. Then the bus makes a wrong turn -- BAM! They hit something... or someone. But the driver says it was just a sheep, and doesn't want to stop because he's an ex-con on parole. And all the kids are high on drugs, so they don't want to get involved with the police either, despite Gina's worried pleas to check under the bus. As they leave the scene, we learn what really happened: the bus did hit a lost sheep -- but when the wife of Joseph Haas came out to look for it, the Snallygaster got her. However, the old Amish man finds his dead wife's body and mistakenly thinks it was the party bus that killed her. So he invokes white magic to summon the Snallygaster for revenge. Cut to: the kids on the bus... BLAM! Something crashes into the roof -- the Snallygaster is after them. That sets off a horrific chain of events as they find themselves being hunted by the dragon-like beast. It turns into a SPEED meets PUMPKINHEAD movie with touches of BLAIR WITCH. The Snallygaster myth and backstory also involves the dark side of the closed-off Amish community (ever wonder about all that inbreeding?) and human nature, so it's got some real substance too. In the end though, it's about what happens when misguided rage and fear unleash the inner demons within us all.