Real Cases of Shadow People: The Sarah McCormick Story (2019) Overlong found footage movie about three friends who disappeared while making a documentary on the subject of shadow people. There’s some interesting interviews with relatives of people who’re seemingly abducted by shadow people, and some creepy moments during the climax, but way too much time is spent on the three filmmakers goofing around and showing just how thin the plot of this lifeless exercise is. C–
June 9 (2008) Set in 1999, this features a group of bored teens who film themselves taking numerous trips over the course of a week to a nearby town that’s supposedly cursed by a series of supernatural incidents. A surprisingly enjoyable and authentic found footage chiller with realistic characters and a genuine ’90s feel, this runs a bit long but is worth it for the bonkers, Ten Thousand Maniacs-like ending. B
Shopping Tour (2012) Russian found footage flick about a mother and her teenage son who while on a shopping trip to Finland are locked inside a giant department store and attacked by cannibals. More of a satire, this has some fun, Dawn of the Dead-like moments but uninteresting characters and a jokey focus on Russian/Finnish relations might alienate some. Also, we need to do something about these annoying, inconclusive endings. C
If you’re in the mood for some POV action this steamy summer you should check out these found footage titles currently streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi.
First up is Horror in the High Desert (2021), a nice slow burner, structured almost like an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Presented as a documentary, the film explores the days and events leading up to the disappearance of survivalist Gary (Eric Mencis) within the Nevada wilderness, including the last known video Gary ever filmed. In standard found footage/mockumentary fashion, this video represents the climax of the movie, and delivers some impressive, WTF creep-out moments.
The Lost Footage of Leah Sullivan (2018) is a movie I’d read about for the last few years on FF blogs. Finally available on Tubi, I’m happy to report the film is worth the hype. The flick follows college student Leah (Anna Stromberg), a likable, spunky character who’s making a documentary on a local unsolved murder and, while doing so, stumbles onto the sinister truth. Funny, scary, and always engaging, Leah Sullivan succeeds in delivering a well-rounded and effective little scare show.
One of the more unsettling mockumentaries I’ve seen in recent years is Savageland (2015), a nasty little flick that deserves attention. The story revolves around the unexplained massacre of all 57 residents in a US-Mexican border town. Suspicion falls on the sole survivor, an illegal immigrant branded a psychopath. But the pictures he took that night tell a different story. What sets Savageland apart from the bulk of FF movies is that the footage in question isn’t video but still photographs, which the filmmakers cleverly weave into the story, creating a map of the bloody killing spree and showing some truly chilling imagery.
If you’re a fan of Paranormal Activity-style POV horror you might want to check out 21 Days (2014). In this unexceptional, slightly entertaining “let’s set up cameras to capture evidence of ghosts” movie, three friends lock themselves inside a supposedly haunted house to find out why the previous tenants left in such a hurry. Unfortunately, the movie falls into the overused FF trap of characters who, when in doubt, endlessly scream and shout their lines.
Last, and, unfortunately, least, is Blackwood Evil (2000), an early Blair Witch clone about a spirited journalist (Joanie Bannister), a cameraman (Richard Catt), and a psychic (Peggy Catt), who spend the night in a remote, abandoned house in rural Texas that’s reportedly been used for satanic worship and other sinister activity. The VHS-quality video formatting gives the movie a good atmosphere, but the movie takes way too long for anything interesting to happen, and, just like 21 Days, there’s too much unnecessary bickering between the characters. That said, the movie does attain a goofy charm during the confusing and chaotic climax.
Savageland is available on Amazon Prime. All the other titles are currently streaming on Tubi.
This interview contains minor spoilers, so if you have not yet watched the films mentioned in this post please do so first and come back!
I had the opportunity of sitting down with filmmaker Joshua Criss to discuss his 2012 found footage creep-fest, Leaving D.C. The film chronicles the adventures of Mark (played by Criss), a man who makes video diaries of his move from Washington, D.C. to the isolated woods of Virginia, where he unexpectedly encounters a pesky, ghostly neighbor.
Criss, along with his playful cat, informs me of the pros and cons of filmmaking (especially with his newest project, the horror-comedy The Caretaker, which he also stars, along with his mother), his love for The Blair Witch Project, and how much he would like to be eyewitness to a real paranormal event.
This week I spoke to Carl Medland, writer and director of The Spiritualist, and the Paranormal Farm movies. Carl took time to chat with me about his films, about filmmaking, about his horror inspirations, and about the future of found footage.
For more information on Carl, please follow him on Instagram and Twitter. Watch his films, The Spiritualist, and Paranormal Farm, on Amazon Prime. For the full unedited version of this interview, please go to my YouTube page! And don’t forget to check out my full review of the Paranormal Farm trilogy!
This post contains some spoilers. I recommend watching the films and then come back and read/watch.
If you’re a fan of found footage horror you’ll most likely have heard of the Paranormal Farm series, one of the more inventive in the Paranormal Activity sweepstakes. The first Paranormal Farm, released in 2017 and directed by British filmmaker Carl Medland, has paranormal investigator and psychic, Carl (Medland), traveling to a remote country farm to meet Lucy and Darren, who believe their home and surrounding land are haunted.
Upon meeting Lucy and Darren at their sprawling farm, Carl is informed that Lucy’s and Darren’s daughter, Jessica, disappeared in the nearby woods five years earlier. Carl suggests the supernatural activity happening in their home could be the spirit of Jessica, and uses the idea as the basis for his investigation. Lucy also mentions the presence of a “beast” that roams the land but Carl seems to dismiss that as unimportant. Carl also takes note of the strange collection of scarecrow-like mannequins that are scattered throughout the property – great material for any horror film.
Carl is left to spend the night at the farm by himself and experiences several creepy incidents, including objects moving by themselves, body possession, and someone stalking the grounds in a clown mask. It all comes to a chaotic conclusion with a relatively satisfying, if weird, ending, but if you’re expecting anything resembling normality in this film you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Paranormal Farm is not your typical FF movie: it sits in a higher, surreal level of both campy self-parody and imaginative storytelling. This is a film that knows what it is and knows how to navigate through the template of the FF arena, at the same time offering up some impressive visuals and original characters.
This is also a movie that throws a lot of information at you at a fast pace, and if you’re not paying attention, you’ll feel like you’re in a maze. But that’s one of the charms of PF, its ability to disorient and confuse you, which just adds to the intriguing mystery of the story; often you have no clue what you’re actually looking at. It’s like the David Lynch of found footage movies.
Paranormal Farm II: Closer to the Truth (2018) is the ultimate meta sequel as it doesn’t continue the story from PF but is more of a spin-off. Picking up a few months after the events of the first movie, Carl is back on the farm interviewing Lucy and Darren, not as a paranormal investigator, but as a filmmaker. Carl is making a behind-the-scenes feature for the DVD release of PF, which we’re told was Carl’s fictionalized account of the real supernatural events Lucy and Darren have experienced over the years. Got it? OK, let’s move on!
With his friend and editor, Taz (Mumtaz Yildrimlar), along for the ride, Carl gets more of the real story from Lucy, Darren, and their neighbors about what inspired him to make PF. We also find out the disappearance of a local girl, Sarah, was the basis for Jessica in the first film. There’s also talk of nearby cults, and, of course, the infamous beast that roams the area. While investigating the story, Carl discovers a nearby house where the father (Robert Gray) of Sarah lives and who some of the neighbors think is actually the beast.
The deeper Carl digs into the local “cult,” a group of people who meet in the woods around a fire (not unlike the climax of PF), the stranger Darren and Lucy act; and a makeshift séance performed by Carl contacts the supposed ghost of Sarah, upsetting Lucy, who says, “Nothing has been done incorrectly. It was all done ages ago. Why is it being brought up again?” Are Lucy and Darren hiding the truth about what happened to Sarah?
PFII transcends the found footage subgenre: it doesn’t play by the rules and it doesn’t care if you don’t like that.
How can Carl and the gang take the premise any further? That’s answered with Paranormal Farm III: Halloween (2019), which sees Carl and Taz back on the haunted farm a month after their visit in PFII. They need Lucy and Darren to sign their contracts in order to get the footage included on the DVD release of the film, but once Carl and Taz arrive they find both Lucy and Darren being attacked by two of the mannequins that dress their property.
But the supernatural occurrences don’t stop there. Later on, Carl seemingly moves an object with his mind and is attacked by something that covers him in blood. But, in PF fashion, Carl and the gang move passed the incident to uncover even more oddities, including a mysterious box with a petrified rat, and Darren’s increasing anger and annoyance with what he thinks are Carl’s fake movie antics.
We’re also introduced to a local blind woman who, like Carl, has psychic abilities and who may be able to help Carl uncover the truth about the paranormal activities plaguing Lucy and Darren.
All of the information from the three films sounds scattered and random, but everything eventually comes together, including revelations about the beast and the truth of Lucy and Darren’s haunting.
One of the clever things about PFIII is that we’re actually told what happens in the very last frame of PFII while Taz is editing the scene on his computer. You can’t get much more meta than that.
If you want a bit of crazy, creepy, and sharply funny entertainment you can’t do any wrong with the Paranormal Farms. As of this writing, Paranormal Farm II and III are currently streaming on Amazon Prime. You can purchase all three Blu-ray discs through Amazon.
For more information and updates on the films check out director Carl Medland’s Instagram!
There’s plenty of fish in the sea, at least when it comes to found footage horror flicks on Amazon Prime. If you’re a FF fanatic like myself you’ll want to check out these currently streaming POV chillers.
Released just this year, Finding Randy is a mostly clever mystery chiller about a group of friends celebrating the return home of their buddy, Randy (Sam Meder). Things turn from fun to worrisome when Randy seemingly vanishes during an excursion into the woods, a mystery that intensifies when several of his friends start receiving cryptic text messages and photos from Randy’s phone.
Energetically directed by Greg McNichol, FR is a nice change in pace in the FF universe: instead of friends investigating a haunted house the film offers a smart group of people pulling a sorta Scooby-Doo act in order to find out why their friend disappeared. And for a lot of its running time FR manages to pull you in and envelope you in its puzzle.
Butterfly Kisses (2018) is one of the more ambitious FF flicks I’ve seen in a while. Struggling filmmaker Gavin (Seth Adam Kallick) discovers a mysterious box of videotape in his in-laws’ basement. The footage appears to be an unfinished student film about an urban legend known as the Peeping Tom. Thinking this could be the break he needs, Gavin sets out to find out if the creepy footage is real evidence of supernatural activity, or simply a prank.
BK creates a thoroughly sinister atmosphere and some genuinely chilling moments. The only weak point is Gavin who comes off as way too aggressively unlikeable. That aside, this is a worthy entry in the FF subgenre and definitely worth a look.
They’re Watching (2016) presents one of the cleverest ideas for a FF movie I’ve heard in years: what would happen if House Hunters International filmed an episode at a house once occupied by a witch? The small crew of such a reality show finds out when they fly to a small eastern European country to renovate a centuries old house. Things don’t go quite as planned when superstitious locals start getting in the way.
TW is a fun crowd-pleaser that never takes itself seriously and builds to a bat-shit crazy ending. An uninteresting subplot involving one of the characters gets in the way but that’s a small price to pay for a massively entertaining flick.
A burnt out filmmaker (Turner Clay) switches career paths and decides to venture into the world of paranormal investigation in The Blackwell Ghost (2017), a conservative Paranormal Activity-type of creepfest. His first foray into the supernatural takes him to suburban Pennsylvanian house supposedly haunted by the ghost of a child killer from the 1930s.
An enjoyable low-key slow burn, BG is fueled by the energy and likability of Clay’s character and a genuinely chilling atmosphere. It’s also nice to see a film of this kind treating the subject matter with respect and sincere interest rather than a standard cheesy, exploitative rip-off like many of the ilk.
Frazier Park Recut (2017) is the jewel in this crown. Being both a semi-parody of the FF subgenre and an authentically suspenseful tale, the film features aspiring moviemakers Tyler (Tyler Schnabel) and Sam (Sam Hanover) in their endeavor to shoot a low-budget FF film at an isolated woodsy cabin. Along for the ride is peculiar actor, Tom (David Lee Hess), cast as the film-within-the-film’s killer. Things slowly go downhill when Tayler’s and Sam’s ideas clash and Tom subtly, and actively, sabotages the production. Does Tom have other plans for the two filmmakers?
If Creep was your kind of movie then you’ll definitely get a kick out of FPR. It’s smart, funny, and memorable, especially Hess who comes off as both demented and weirdly likable.
All of these fun flicks are available on Amazon Prime and definitely worth checking out. Please watch my video review below for more details on the above films!
