PARANORMAL FARM – found footage review

Man, talk about a tease!

This film gives you visions of possessed pork, hellish horsies, demonic donkeys, and maybe even malevolent moo cows and all we got were clowns(!) of all things.

This was made in 2017, and since that’s pre-Covid I can’t recall if that was during Clownageddeon or not, I think it was, so, if so, that makes the use of clowns in the movie even more woeful.

Oof.

Spoiler alert, this is a rare movie I gave a zero out of five on Letterboxd so it doesn’t look good for this one, but let’s dive in, shall we?

The film follows an amateur paranormal investigator that has arrived at a farm that is said to be plagued by paranormal disturbances. Lights in the woods. Things moving around the house. The feeling of a presence. Could it all be related to the disappearance of the couple’s daughter or is it something else? As the man tucks in for the night and starts his investigation He soon realizes that there is far more going on than he had bargained for and that whatever is happening is far more dangerous than he could have dreamed.

Is it aliens?

Is it a beast?

Is it a the benevolent ghost of their dead daughter?

Is it an evil spirit?

Or is it just clowns, man?

WHO KNOWS?

What starts off with a good premise, some decent performances, and a really simple set up that could pay dividends to the right filmmaker. Alas, after forty minutes things fall off the rails. Once he starts investigating though things fall apart. Once he sees a random clown in the woods (followed up by an even more random and cringey encounter with a gay couple making out in the same woods) things just lose all steam. I will always admire people seeing a film through because it’s not an easy thing to do, but it never ceases to irk me when people have one germ of an idea and don’t put any work into fleshing it out. What you have here is a film that feels more improvisational than written, and that’s fine, but it also means it feels sorta creepy, sorta funny, and completely awkward. I have no idea what tone they were going for here. There are threads that are laid out but never pulled. There are more ideas here than anything that delves into them.

The heck of it, as it is with so many of these found footage films, is that there are some interesting ideas and having a protagonist that is out of their depth is good. Their being a bit of a fool until it gets serious is good too. It’s just that they have too many ideas here.

Like I said, aliens, beasts, ghosts, and clowns.

They have nothing to do with one another but they are all tied.

I guess.

The end of the film feels like a complete slap in the face to anyone that’s been hanging on for the movie. That they have made a sequel to this is just too much. I watched the trailer and cringed. This feels like another movie where they were too interested in franchising it to bother with making things make sense and creating a compeling film. Looking at some reviews from other folks and some people dug it.

Good on them.

I hated it.

I loathed it.

I have seen worse movies, I have seen far more amateurish films. This one just grates on me at how there is no real feeling that they knew what they were going for and then topped the sundae with an utter preposterous and ridiculous ending.

More power to them.

It worked well enough to do a sequel so, there you go.

What do I know?

I didn’t like it a bit.

Fair warning, this one gets VERY wibbly wobbly with the camera towards the end, so be warned if you get sea sick.

.25 out of 5