Lifetime: Stalked by My Amish Boyfriend

This 2024 Lifetime movie popped up on my guide last week. I decided to watch it as a contrast to “The Housemaid” (1960), which I recently reviewed and mentioned how the plot of that South Korean film sounded like something straight outta Lifetime.

The main characters in “My Amish Boyfriend” are:

Carly, the stalkee: Leigha Sinnott
Abram, the stalker: Sam Bullington
Jenna, Carly’s lifelong best friend: Courtney Grace
Grant, Carly’s dad: John Castle
Mona*, Amish woman: Samantha Binkerd
(*Sometimes, it sounds like Nona and the captions say Nona)

“Stalked” in the title of the Lifetime movie actually isn’t the entire picture. It escalates into kidnapping! The opening establishes 2 things: (1) a scary Amish man frightens a young girl so much, she falls out of a barn; (2) Carly has a close knit relationship with her father and her best friend but is about to go off on a solo summer vacation. Off she goes and she meets a big guy named Abram in a coffee shop. She literally runs into him and spills her latte on his shirt. Carly finds him interesting when she learns he is Amish. He gains her sympathy and trust with a sad story about his life. This little meeting blooms into a summer romance that means a lot more to Abram than it does to Carly.

Carly goes off to college and lo! and behold, who turns up on campus but Abram. He claims he had no idea she was going to attend the college. She wonders how an Amish kid with no school records could get accepted but Abram claims he has an accredited GED. Bestie Jenna is not as trusting as Carla. She investigates and finds out Abram isn’t registered as a student at all. Jenna makes the mistake of telling Abram she’s on to him before she tells Carly. A big guy shows up in a ski mask and she gets a big warning punch that knocks her down.

Meantime, Jenna’s misgivings fall on deaf ears as Carly refuses to see Abram in a bad light and chalks up Jenna’s doubts to jealousy. But Abram begins to crowd Carly too much and overstep even more. She can’t explain away the creepiness of Abram going to meet her father behind her back. She tells Abram she needs a break from dating. All hell breaks loose when he sees her with Wyatt, whose friendship with Carly has inflamed Abram’s jealousy before. This is when he kidnaps Carly and whisks her away to a community of shunned Amish who make their own rules.

Up to this point, it’s routine stalker fare, except for how they don’t go into who punched Jenna. I guess it happened so fast, Jenna didn’t even notice the size of her attacker. Abram is 6’5″ tall. After the kidnapping, you start to see what a psycho Abram really is. With his red hair hanging in his face, he is truly intimidating as he plays the quiet menace. It’s no wonder Carly quickly realizes that acting up is not an option. I turned the movie off after a little of this because the tension of what he was going to do next was getting to me.

Comparison: There really wasn’t any part of “The Housemaid” that I found scary. Sure, the housemaid was nuts but she wasn’t scary. She was a tiny thing to wield so much power but the family she worked for seemed to be in a “damned if we do and damned if we don’t” situation.

“The Housemaid” (1960) has a 7.3 rating (out of 6000 votes). “Stalked by My Amish Boyfriend” (2024) has a 7.2 rating (out of 18 votes). The 1960 movie has obviously stood the test of time for its appeal to classic film lovers. I can’t see that happening with this 2024 made-for-TV movie. Still, “Stalked by My Amish Boyfriend” was scary enough for me to turn it off about half an hour before the end, but not scary enough to stop me from going back to see how it ended.