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!