Panic Fest 2025 Coverage
The Lost Episode review
For better or worse, The Lost Episode is fully committed.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Lost Episode
Directed by Nick Wernham
Written by Abbadon Night
Starring Anthony Grant and Benjamin Sutherland
The Lost Episode Review
The Lost Episode is so committed to its faux-Cops episode motif that it doesn’t even include credits at the end of the film. More importantly, it spends a full hour grounding itself into a seemingly unspectacular world full of misdemeanor offenses (with an occasional gunshot victim). This is a movie that wants you to buy into its concept…and is willing to do the work. That requires commitment from you, the viewer, as well. If you are as locked into what The Lost Episode is doing as the story itself…this ride-along will be worth the trip.
The Lost Episode sells itself as exactly that. A never aired episode of a reality TV show very much like, but without the license to use the name of, Cops. It takes place on Halloween 2004. We (literally) follow two officers on their daily grind. Terrence Williams (Anthony Grant) has returned from a leave of absence and is back on the streets with his partner Paul Massaro (Benjamin Sutherland). They deal with some public nuisances, a church related theft, a missing goat…the kinds of crimes that let you know what the town of Franklin is up to in its darkest corners. Or so we think.
It takes nearly half the length of The Lost Episode for something genuinely strange to happen. There are warnings, of course. Portends of a dark force at work. You wouldn’t blame Williams and Massaro for missing them. Horror fans will hear “church theft” and “missing goat” and draw some pretty specific (and ultimately accurate) assumptions about the direction The Lost Episode is heading. But hey…they aren’t detectives.
Most of The Lost Episode is spent riding along with the officers from the backseat through the lens of the show’s cameraman. He’s accompanied by a sound technician. These two characters rarely appear as part of the story…because this is, for the most part, simply an episode of a cop reality show.
That strange occurrence involves an odd looking little fellow in a red cloak. He seemingly vanishes while the officers are questioning him. It won’t be the last we see of this character…and it is far from the strangest thing that awaits the officers in The Lost Episode. But they, like the viewer, will have to wait a long time to get to that.
There’s a truth about these kinds of found footage movies that is inescapable. We’re always just waiting to see if the payoff is worth it. The longer that slow burn…the better the boom needs to be. The Lost Episode is one of the longest slow burns you’re going to find. I’d liken it to an extremely extended segment from one of the V/H/S films. You know the weird stuff is coming…it’s just a matter of how long they make you wait. Director Nick Wernham makes you wait an awfully long time. He is letting you get to know these two men…and ever so slowly escalating the sense of strangeness around them.
What’s most impressive about The Lost Episode is how many things it ties together in the end. It’s wild (and worth it) final act feels like the (un)natural conclusion of so many little story threads you might not have been sure even mattered at all. Everything from a run-in with the police chief to Williams’s leave of absence to the missing goat pays off in some (often crazy) way. The hour spent meeting random people and their seemingly unconnected events pays off in unexpected, and entertaining, ways. The last twenty minutes or so of The Lost Episode is well worth waiting out the ride.
Grant and Sutherland deliver completely realistic and grounded characters. They exist in a world that seems just as normal. But the small town of Franklin is hiding a big secret. Something that the officers couldn’t possibly be prepared for. Something you won’t be sure is worth such a long-committed build towards as you watch their daily routines. It’s worth it. Take the ride. Pay attention to everything. Then sit back and enjoy where it takes you.
Scare Value
If you ever enjoyed the TV show Cops…you’re going to love The Lost Episode. It’s a fully realized version of that show that goes completely off the rails in its final act. It will push you to the limits of your patience at times. We know something weird is going to happen…or this episode wouldn’t have been lost in the first place. When the officers pursue a car to a strange house on the outskirts of town…it becomes the best episode of Cops ever made.
