We're stretching definitions here a bit, but it's for a purpose. "American Movie" is a documentary about the amateur production of a short horror film called "Coven". It tells the story of its long and troubled process, all centered around its inept but persuasive director Mark Borchardt.

We've talked about indie horror movies here, but American Movie documents one of the last times when a production like this could have happened, before filmmaking was fully democratized by digital video technology.

And after we talk about the documentary, we watch and react to the film "Coven" itself, which, uhh, is very bad. And we should have realized that it might be.