TheMovieDoctorful "Lost Tapes" is one of the most inconsistent shows I have ever seen in my life. On its best episodes, its one of the scariest and most well made horror shows ever made. On its worst episodes, its equivalent to the very worst of the SyFy channel's schlock in terms of effects and acting. That said, good or bad, "Lost Tapes" is NEVER boring. Whether screaming in horror (Okay, maybe not SCREAMING, but jumping and/or getting a MAJOR case of goosebumps is frequent) or laughing in hysterics, "Lost Tapes" is almost always an insanely fun watch. The episodes are all fast paced 30 minute "found footage" shorts spliced with background information on the particular subject of the episode. (Bigfoot, Aliens, Werewolves, e.t.c) The subtlety of the scares in the better episodes is surprising. Many times, the monster itself will never be fully revealed, but merely heavily teased via shots of its shadow, eyes or distinguishing features. It uses your imagination to terrify you, never revealing its monsters, but giving you enough information for your brain to conjure up something more terrifying than the best of effects can produce.The acting is, like the quality of the show, inconsistent. Episodes like "Hellhound", "Bear Lake Monster" and "Dover Demon" boast solid, very realistic performances while others like "Zombies" and "Poltergeist" contain some truly laughable acting. The performances in these episodes are the biggest source of comedy to be found in the show, seemingly acted by unpaid interns or friends of the director rather than professional actors. Season 2 seems to contain the most consistently well acted episodes.The characters aren't particularly deep (How deep can they really be in an under 30 minute short after all?), but they're likable to the point you don't want them to die and are, for the most part, surprisingly intelligent. Sometimes the characters are smart enough to actually survive their terrifying brushes with certain death, and when that's not the case, their decision making is at the very least reasonable."Lost Tapes" is FAR from a perfect show, but my GOD is it always entertaining. Whether scary or funny, the LAST thing anyone can accuse it of being is boring. It really was ahead of its time as far as the "found footage" thing went (Found footage movies existed upon its release, but the film was a couple years early of the real "craze" of the genre), and it's a shame, as this is one show that DEFINITELY deserved more seasons.

Lomedin Being a fan of found footage, I was excited to hear about this. Man, was I disappointed.First of all, the stories involved to present the episodes are utterly rubbish, clichéd, written by talentless and uninspired people. Secondly, the people involved in presenting the script (it'd be an insult to real actors and actresses to call them anything else) do a job beyond terrible in their attempt to give any credibility.Furthermore, the special effects are virtually non-existent; noise, mostly, some recycle grunts and growls which, honestly, are laughable at times. The visual effects are found in the form of half of a second blurry shapes or extremely poor CGI of something that could be anything, so undefined they are (and I suspect is due to the fact that they are bad effects, not an effort to make everything more mysterious).I didn't find this scary at all, but quite boring. It is pretty simple: the show contains no visual stimuli which could create fear, and the noises are ridiculous, as I previously said. Perhaps little children could get scared. The atmosphere and/or psychological factor are both nonexistent.Finally, the real mystery and scary thing here is how in the world this trash can have a score of more than 6, and even individuals giving it a 10!!!! Seriously, the top score! They are comparing this show to the best possible works of art ever created for both the big and little screens. Although considering certain comments such as "the acting isn't always great" or "this show blew me away", we seem to see what standards viewers relay on. Coming back to "the acting isn't always great"... Well, no kidding! To say that the acting isn't always great is to claim that a pile of manure isn't always a divine vision.It is pitiful that Animal Planet created and aired this, and even worse that they didn't even bother with a proper budget (any!), at least average actor/actresses or interesting plots. If I have the strength, I'll continue to watch pass the couple of eps that I suffered, since perhaps the show could get better (wouldn't be difficult!), and in the hope that people's opinions still have a minimum of decency left.

martykel This was a waste of time. As if the slew of annoying commercials every 3 minutes wasn't bad enough, the whole thing stunk to high heaven of poorly manufactured farce. Even trying to get ten lines of text to make this comment worthy of the IMDb commentary is tough. What can you say about another idiotic TV show thrust upon the viewing public? Let's see - waste of time - yep. Waste of film - yep. Bad acting - Oh yeah. It's like they rolled the dice and came up with an excuse to get more air time for commercials featuring absolutely worthless products that no one needs. Animal Planet is getting just as bad as the Discovery Channel and the History Channel when it comes to commercials. Did I mention that an over abundance of commercials sucks? Current TV industry greed is way over the line.

pinoyartist99 After all the paranormal reality shows/docudramas comes this bizarre show from Animal Planet. Despite being a mockumentary show, it is "supposedly" based off of real events. These "Lost Tapes" capture the final events of the victim and their encounter with a supposed cryptid (aka Nessie, Big Foot, Chupacabra, etc.); like we haven't seen this before. The show tries to pull ploys from Blair Witch and Cloverfield, where the victim or victims are just pretty much running with a hand held camera; running from something that's behind them. And in Blair Witch/Cloverfield fashion, the creature is barely seen; either seeing a silhouette or a body part, but not the entire creature. Since this is Animal Planet were talking about, the show mainly just deals with cryptozoological creatures rather than full paranormal phenomenons such as ghosts and UFOs. No aliens or spirits on this show. While this show is humorous in many ways (as an equivalent of a SciFi Original Movie); the show does ponder the question...WHEN THE HECK WILL WE FINALLY CAPTURES/VIDEO TAPES THESE CREATURES IN REAL LIFE? I mean, it took a while to film a giant squid in a nature habitat. Unlike with extraterrestials or the after life, at least the public has some idea that these cryptids have the "potential" to exist on Earth. Will we ever know, who knows. Overall, the series is a decent watch if you're bored; however, paranormal magazine shows like Sightings or documentaries like Monster Quest are more decent things to watch, if you're into that sort of stuff. Then again, there's always going to the library and reading about it too.