I’m a big fan of the films of Philip J. Cook, starting with Invader and Beyond the Rising Moon. Recently, Visual Vengeance put out Despiser, one of his movies that I was lucky to get to record a commentary track for. Since then, he’s made Outerworld, the Malice series of films and web series, Pungo: A Witch’s Tale and now this film, Ghost Planet.

All of Cook’s films share a unique look, as he pushes himself to develop his own special effects, and an interesting take on their stories, which eschew traditional Hollywood narratives.

Max Stone (Joe Mayes), his lawyer sister Julia (Claudia Troy) and their soldier half brother George (Mark Hyde, Despiser) are space rogues and archaeologists, looking for the technology left behind by the Tesserans. The ships that they find are beyond our understanding, but they have found an entire base full of them, just as a solar flare forces them to run.

A year later and things haven’t worked out so well. George has cancer, acquired on one of the many worlds where he was forced to do shadow ops, and the loan that Max took to pay for new body parts can’t be paid back, leading to repo men coming to take them back by force. They’re nearly killed before a mysterious woman named Trudy (Georgia Anastasia) saves them, killing a man and putting them in prison, where Julia is able to get them released.  Soon, they find out why they were able to get away. Trudy is an android owned by John Moesby (Ulysses E. Campbell), who wants them to go back to space and find the Tesseran technology for him.

This brings them to the titular Ghost Planet, a haunted world where the only living person is a young girl named Naiad (Julie Kashmanian), while being hunted by space pirates who want the same tech that they do. However, Naiad gives the Stones the edge they need, as she knows how to communicate with the Tesseran machinery.

I’ve read some reviews that take this movie to task for how it looks and I honestly wish these people had just an ounce of imagination. Cook has created several worlds here from sound stages, green screen, CGI and miniatures. It doesn’t always feel real, but you have to realize that he’s making this movie with the budget of a few days of the catering of a blockbuster. The trade off is that this is rich with ideas and heart.

What you get is a movie that looks and feels like nothing else, other than a Philip J. Cook movie. And that’s exactly what I wanted this to be. I mean, spaceships guided through the galaxy by bubblegum? Incredible.

You can learn more on the official site and watch this on Tubi.