The Lost Episode (2012) User Reviews

The Lost Episode: Enough of the same movie again and again!

[Platypuschow · 2/10 · 4 March 2019]

The Lost Episode is the 7th movie in the Paranormal Investigations franchise. A series of unconnected movies, all hyper low budget, ghost themed and terrible.

Well this is terrible that's for certain but it does have a couple of differences from the others. For a start it had a clean million budget, this is a great deal higher than the rest, though to be honest you'd never tell. Second and here's where it gets weird, this straight to the bargain bin 7th movie in a awful franchise was directed by Michael Rooker. Yes star of Guardians of the Galaxy, Walking Dead, Mallrats and countless other films in his only director role, and he stars in it as well! I'd love to know the story behind that, it's so bizarre. It's like Spielberg suddenly deciding to direct an Evil Bong movie!

Outside of the addition of Rooker however this just yet another movie about people going to an abandoned asylum and getting picked off. However it's badly disjointed due to ultimately telling several stories at the same time both past and present, and the fact the cover suggests this is found footage it begs the question of where is the footage?

Sorry Mr Rooker but your directorial debut is an embarrassing mess that has nothing to set it apart from the other thousand copy and paste movie of its ilk.

The Good:

Michael Rooker

The Bad:

A found footage with no found footage

Stock screams

Recycled nonsense

Ridiculously disjointed

Uhm....really?

[XPJKingX · 2/10 · 30 May 2014]

A 2 is being nice. I'm very surprised that Beverley Mitchell & Haylie Duff are associated with this video (yup, filmed on vid not film). Then I saw they helped produce it. Ouch! C'mon ladies! I wanted to stop watching after 20 minutes but out of a love of Bev & Haylie I continued til the end. The acting is some of the worst I've ever seen. Although Haylie does a good job at being believable the rest of the cast is pretty blah. Sorry to say Bev even wasn't up to par in this and I'm a big fan of hers. It's categorized as horror, I see it as comedy. I see the budget was 1 million. Where'd it go? Certainly not into the making of this movie. With Michael Rooker directing you'd think the movie would be worth a watch. Sorry, Mr. Rooker. Don't quit your day job.

Avoid at all costs

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 28 November 2014]

THE LOST EPISODE is another in a long line of no-budget found-footage ghost films set in abandoned asylums, following on from the likes of the GRAVE ENCOUNTERS films and EPISODE 50. This one's the worst yet, despite the presence of cult horror favourite Michael Rooker (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) working as both director and guest star.

This film features a muddled narrative set in both past and present, repeatedly swapping between the two time zones. One narrative involves a film crew shooting a documentary in the asylum, the other involves the stereotypical group of teenagers out for a thrill. Lots of lame wandering around and godawful dialogue scenes are interspersed with some extraordinarily lame deaths.

The movie's cast is appalling, with not one actor standing out from the quagmire. Rooker wisely hides his face behind a mask for the most part, but as a director he displays no discernible talent whatsoever; stick to what you're good at, dude, i.e. stay in FRONT of the camera where we want to see you! Needless to say there's nothing else worth mentioning here, because it's an entirely worthless film and comes close to meriting the dreaded 'one star' rating.

Just...don't.

[alansmithee04 · 1/10 · 10 November 2012]

Not a found footage movie, but rather a movie based upon what's become one of the more standard found footage movie plots. What am I talking about? Only this...

Pennhurst is about a group of obnoxious teens who go to an abandoned mental hospital to screw around. While there, the most obnoxious of the bunch tells the story of a TV "ghost hunting" crew who visited that selfsame hospital and were brutally murdered. Pretty standard, yes? No! This film doesn't even try to maintain the found footage conceit. Badly chosen music, meant to be scary I suppose, crops up on the soundtrack throughout. And speaking of scary, there ain't none. Maybe two or three scenes, all of them staring the film's director/star Michael Rooker, could be considered at all scary and then only if they were taken out of context with rest of the film.

If Pennhurst has a saving grace, it's that at least the cast looked like they were having fun shooting it. Which is good, because I doubt anyone else will enjoy it as much.

DR. DEATH WANTS YOU.

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 18 April 2018]

"The Lost Episode" and "Asylum of the Dead" are the same film....and "Pennhurst" too.

A group of kids enter the haunted Asylum of Pennhurst being turned into a horror theme park. One teen tells a story about a film group that disappeared here while filming a ghost hunters episode. He tells the story that involves ghosts and an evil doctor. Much of the film is a flashback. The terror wasn't there. although they tried with jump scares that you see coming. I did like the ending, but not much more except for maybe that one scene.

Guide: F-word, sex, nudity (Ryan Keely) Part of a horror film 12 pack

Poor

[atinder · 2/10 · 5 May 2013]

I thought this movie was going to be one of those Hand-Held Camera but however they try to make it out it is like ones of those movies.

I thought the plot was okay, they had decent idea of twist in this movie, even thought twist is very predicable from start of the movie.

Number of people go to this building to film before they go into the building this tall guy tells not to go in and yet he goes in there with them.

Thought out the movie loud noise and people screaming and the mad doctor is stalking this place after all these year!

One by one they all getting killed by this made doctor in this haunted place, torture scenes were really badly done too.

The movie was very boring and wasn't actually stopped watching the movie, while cleaning up and having this on in the back ground for most of time.

The acting in this movie was really bad, it had laughing for most of the times, when the over act the lines

2 out 10

Direct To Garbage Video

[smakar · 1/10 · 1 February 2015]

This is an incoherent mess of a video, worse than most amateur videos on YouTube.

The plot, such as it is, involves a group of young people visiting an abandoned building which is being converted into a "haunted house". During this visit, one of the youths tell the others a story of a group of paranormal investigators who went missing the previous year when filming an investigation of this site. And of course, they find that the story/myth is real.

In an attempt to be somewhat objective, I've rated this movie based on three categories: a) Story/Plot/Characters, b) Acting, and c) Production Values (Editing, Sound Quality, Visual Appeal). Each category was ranked by the following scores: 0 = Abysmal 1 = Below Average 2 = Average 3 = Above Average

On top of the above total possible of 9, I have a wild-card point given if some facet of the film made me go WOW, or made me wish to see it again very soon because I enjoyed it so much.

a) Story/Plot/Characters - 0 points. The plot was a mess. This movie couldn't decide if it was a ghost story or a slasher flick, and thus failed at both. If was hard to follow if a segment being shown was from the past or the present. The "storyteller" said that the entire investigative crew disappeared without a trace, yet in the "flashback" it appeared that there were two survivors - so what happened to them? In all fairness, it may be a matter of my brain having shut down by then. As for the characters, they were ALL annoying, with the exception of a single character, with the most charisma and who showed the most emotion, and he was a stoned-faced American Indian.

b) Acting - 0 points. I normally give a lot of latitude in this category, for I have a fondness for B movies, and can enjoy the most amateur performances. The problem with this film is I cannot separate the performances from the characters - it's hard to enjoy a performance when I'm spending the time wishing the character would just die (in the film). One of the biggest surprises was finding one of the actors to be the (in my opinion) great Michael Rooker - and even his performance was phoned in - it was as if it was an audition of his before he had any acting lessons.

c) Production Values (Editing, Sound Quality, Visual Appeal) - 0 points. As bad as the rankings for the other two categories were, this one was the worst! The editing was sloppy - it seemed like they used rehearsal takes that were quickly setup with no attention to framing, and the cuts from the present to the past were confusing. There was nothing scary about the location since it all took place during the daytime, which by highlighting all the graffiti on the walls, simply emphasized all the people who have visited this location. But the bottom of the barrel is the sound quality - it was as if someone was sitting on the microphone, or it was pointed opposite of the actors. There was even a moment about 2/3's through where a sound blurb was inserted - like a clip from another movie was accidentally spliced in. Of course, with all the F-bombs having a muddled sound track could be considered a positive thing.

One of the biggest surprises was to find who directed this mess (and this was the first time I had to look outside of IMDb to find details about a movie): none other than Michael Rooker! I can't believe that someone with his experience could create such an abysmal piece of excrement. Once I found this out, I couldn't help but think of the difference between this movie and Josh Stewart's directorial debut: The Hunted. I guess having a lot of experience of being in front of the camera counts for nothing towards being behind the camera.

If it was possible, I would have ranked this movie as 0, but am settling with 1 (the lowest possible).

You have been warned......

Oh God.....NO!......

[cager97 · 1/10 · 15 May 2018]

If yoy have someone in your life that you really. really and I mean REALLY dislike, invite them to your house and make them watch this HORRIBLE excuse for a movie!

They will exit running out the door yelling NNNNOOOOOOO!

Awful

[katieelizabethjade · 1/10 · 24 November 2012]

For decades, pennhurst psychiatric hospital has been haunted by turbulent supernatural forces.

when a local TV show embarks on a mission to capture this paranormal activity, they discover something completely unexpected. As restless souls from their past torment the crew members, they fear for their lives as one by one they are gruesomely murdered.

In a surprising revelation, they discover something more terrifying than ghosts is responsible."

Do not waste your time with this film. It was boring, slow in some places and looked like a very low budget film. Terrible

Undecided

[wowser-76037 · 5/10 · 15 January 2016]

Far from being a critic of this movie, I'm even MORE of a critic of the asinine people attempting to criticize a movie when they can't even spell or use sentence structure. I know I'm not perfect, but DAMN PEOPLE!! At LEAST learn the language if you are going to make comments about a movie!! While the movie itself is not a master work of art, at least the movie tries to have a decent plot twist unlike some of these high budget pieces of garbage that are made by studios with huge wallets. And also unlike the high budget crappy movies, the low budget movies at least try to have original ideas, even if some are dangerously close to clones of other movies. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good or how bad a movie is, it matters what the movie is to the VIEWER. And again - LEARN HOW TO TYPE IN UNDERSTANDABLE, STRUCTURED SENTENCES, ya twits.

Waste of Time

[cityofdelusion93 · 1/10 · 7 April 2013]

Before watching this movie, I looked at reviews on here and other websites. Pretty much all of them were awful, claiming it to be a low- budget, less than satisfactory movie. However, I was skeptical a movie could be as bad as people claimed. Besides, I give most films a chance and see the good side of most.

Saying that, after I proceeded to put it on and watch it, I sat with my mouth open, marveling at just how not-scary a "horror" could be. It's an 18-cert but, if I'm brutally honest, a 12 would be pushing it.

There were next to no scary, suspense moments in it, the plot was so simple a child could have written it and I thought it was indescribable. Usually, I'd say it's just not for me, but I couldn't see anybody enjoying this movie and recommending it as a respectable horror or thriller.

I was really disappointed but at least I'll take more notice of cynical reviews now- don't waste your time with this.

Worst film I ever worked on

[Pzachlen · 1/10 · 12 December 2020]

All the people involved with this has to be the worst crew EVER.I never did get to see this but just being there was enough to keep me far away.I was begged to do this 3 days before production began and needing to go on location.I was able to find an assistant who had no experience in the industry. He turned out to be the best thing I could have ever asked for Michael was his name.. We remained friends after I got fired, first time for me. I had two friends at the time both Michaels. Michael # 1 died of a heart attack and shortly after Michael # 2, My assistant hung himself over a girl. It was a horrible time.

This movie uses actual Pennhurst events for cheap scares

[mikuhinatamangaka · 2/10 · 20 December 2021]

This movie was shot at the actual Pennhurst asylum and it absolutely didn't respect the history of the hospital. It was once a shame to America because of how the doctors and nurses were treating the "children". (When the hospital was still in operation, the staff had referred to the patients as "children" no matter how old they were.) As someone who studies the hospital for over a decade now because I would have been sent there, it was heartbreaking to see and hear the characters use the "Dr. Fear" situation as a joke. Dr. Jesse Fear admitted that he was "punishing" the patients just because he didn't like them or that they annoyed him during the documentary Suffer The Little Children. There's more horrible things that the hospital did, I'm not saying it here because it's even more graphic than this dumpster fire of a movie by far.

Some of the acting was okay. Michael Rooker did a pretty good preformence as Dr. Death, and while the kills were cheap he really was creepy, talking to the characters as if they were patients. The only kill I like and was relieved to see was the eye death in the dentist chair. I know what the chair was used for when the hospital was still around, so I assumed they would mock the history of the hospital by doing the same "punishment" that patients went through. That's why I'm happy that the kill was different from history. As for the other characters I can't even remember their names because they were so incredibly annoying and disrespectful to the history and people who suffered there.

From a disabled woman, don't watch it if you ever want to study the place and want it to be respected.