When a genius 15-year-old girl near Salem, Massachusetts, is recruited by a manipulative female scientist from a genetics laboratory, claims of witchcraft lead to the last witch trial in America where only one of them will survive.

SYNOPSIS:

We see the last actual witch trial in Salem in 1878, then cut to the present-day Halloween season in rural Massachusetts. DANICA JAMES (15) posted a near-perfect score on a college entrance exam at age 11 and has been heavily recruited by prestigious colleges and research laboratories ever since. When a recruiting professor is found dead of mysterious causes, SHERIFF SANTOS (50) suspects Danica may be a witch. Gossip spreads around town that Danica may be using “malicious animal magnetism” to cause pain in others using her mind, claimed in the last witch trial in 1878. Danica’s dysfunctional MAMA (40s), who is a couch potato; and brother, NORM (18), who has a learning disability, are oblivious to Danica’s plight. Norm’s best friend, LOUIS (16), an African-American whom Danica tutors, has picked an awkward time to reveal his crush on her.

Meanwhile, Danica is recruited by mysterious DR. SASHA KINSKI (30), a top scientist from a genetics research laboratory, whose top-selling product is a probiotic-infused coffee sweetener. Danica is alarmed that the brilliant Dr. Kinski, with two Ph.D.s and a medical degree has settled for designing genetically-modified coffee sweeteners, and she makes a bitter enemy. Once out to recruit Danica, Dr. Kinski fears her innate intelligence, and is set on destroying her.

The Sheriff’s investigation soon involves local townsfolk including JUDGE ROY BRICKLE (60), FATHER PETR NOVAK (50), Danica’s former teacher, MS. REYNOLDS (40s), and IZZY BRUENER, the German waitress at the café, which is the center of town gossip. Many in the town begin to experience aches and pains, and nervous hives, which they begin to attribute to Danica’s use of malicious animal magnetism. The town doctor, “DOC SHELLY” (70), Danica’s grandma, is the town’s sole voice of reason, and another target of Dr. Kinski.

The Sheriff’s unsolved case of the dead professor and eerily similar death of Danica’s father three years earlier, are compounded when Danica’s Mama is found dead, and Doc Shelly’s house is burned to the ground with her inside. The Sheriff can’t find Doc Shelly’s body. Norm is suspected in Mama’s death, but Danica’s use of witchcraft hasn’t been ruled out for the other deaths.

A showdown is set at night in the café, where the last witch trial in America will be held. Evidence appears overwhelming that Danica is a witch, and Dr. Kinski looks smug until Doc Shelly, covered in soot, barges into the café to re-direct the focus of the guilt onto Dr. Kinski. Danica proves it was Dr. Kinski who instigated the crimes fearing that Danica was smarter than she. In the end, Danica finds true love in Louis, and the townsfolk have their latest victim for a good old-fashioned witch-burning.

THE LAST WITCH TRIAL