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.

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.

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