DVD Review: Incident At Loch Ness

Wendy and I watch a lot of movies. A lot of movies. So we've basically seen every movie formula hundreds of times. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Movies that stick to a certain formula can still be very good. The Bourne Identity, for instance, sticks to the action movie formula religiously, but it's still a well written, well filmed, well acted movie... and we liked it quite a bit. The 40 Year Old Virgin is a by-the-books raunchy, low-brow comedy that...I must admit... made me laugh like crazy. And there are tons of darn good romantic comedies, horror films, westerns, etc, etc. Formulas, in and of themselves, aren't bad things.

It's rare, though, that I see a movie that I can't put in a nutshell by associating it with any formula at all. It's rare that movie makers take chances and try something totally original. It just seems like too risky a proposition to wander off blindly into uncharted territory... and it seems that the few filmmakers who really do take those kinds of chances have one heck of a hard time getting their movies seen.

Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker who does take those chances quite frequently, and one of the few who's been able to do so with commercial success. Many of his movies simply defy succinct description. His documentary Grizzly Man, for instance, was a movie that I responded to so emotionally that I have as yet been totally unable to write an objective review of it. (Here's a good review of it, if you want to read one.) Then there's Fitzcarraldo, a movie in which an arguably insane Irishman who intends to build an opera house in the rain forest and who hires engineers and laborers to drag a steamboat over a mountain in order to get it to the setting he's deemed suitable. To film that movie, Herzog literally had his crew drag the steamboat over the mountain. Really. It's something to see.

So clearly, Warner Herzog likes to take chances with his movies. Therefore, it's not that surprising to find him as the principle figure in Zak Penn's Incident at Loch Ness, one of the most original, risky, and audacious movies I've seen in years.

Here's the premise... Warner Herzog has decided to make a movie about a certain form of mythology; the human obsession with monsters (aliens, Bigfoot, etc). Herzog is fascinated by the fact that humans choose to believe in them even though science and common sense disprove them. What is it about the human condition that makes us need to believe in monsters? Herzog has decided to use the Loch Ness Monster as the principle example that frames his film.

Meanwhile, Herzog himself is the subject of a documentary about Herzog himself, so he's being followed by a camera crew who capture his every action as he goes about making his film. Herzog goes to Scotland to do a few days of principle photography at Loch Ness, and while he's there shooting, it becomes apparent that his producer is actually working against Herzog, trying to construct an elaborate hoax wherein the crew will seemingly capture video of the monster itself. The producer, Zac Penn, has even brought along a swimsuit model and a nutty "crypto-zoologist" to make it all the more sensational.

As Herzog comes to realize that his producer is trying to turn his movie into a fraud, tensions come to a head. We in the audience see all of this happen through the camera of the film crew making the other film, the one about Herzog. It is at this point in the movie... when the principles are involved in an angry dispute amongst themselves, that something happens.... something dangerous and threatening in Loch Ness itself begins to attack the boat.

The only way I can describe this movie with any brevity is to say that it's a cross between This Is Spinal Tap and The Blair Witch Project and American Movie. It is, at times, extremely funny. The first hour of the film had both Wendy and I laughing out loud with pure delight. Then, in the movie's third and final act, the story makes a radical and surprising change in direction. It actually becomes suspenseful, tense, and downright scary.

How in the world they managed to make this movie work on all of those levels just blows my mind. And exactly what to call this movie... what pigeonhole to try to force it into... is beyond me. It's not really a mocumentary because it doesn't involve actors playing fictional roles. The sound man that we meet in the film, Russell Williams, really is a sound engineer who's worked on films like Training Day and The Sum Of All Fears. Herzog's cinematographer, and a principle character in this film, is Gabriel Beristain, the man behind the lens on films like Blade II and K2. Everyone in the film really is who they say they are. In that respect, it's a documentary, not a parody.

And yet the situations the moviemakers find themselves in are so ridiculous, so outrageously funny, that this is clearly a scripted film. Zac Penn, the disgraceful producer, directed Incident at Loch Ness, so neither Herzog (the director of the phantom documentary about monster myths) nor John Baily, (the supposed director of the documentary about Herzog), were actually responsible for the finished product. This movie is all Zak Penn's baby. It's Zak Penn's big, muddled, stupid, horrifying, hillarious baby.

It shouldn't work. This movie should be an unwatchable mess. It's a movie about a movie crew making a movie about a director who's making a movie about a monster that doesn't exist... and, suddenly, the monster that doesn't exist attacks their boat. And, get this: the special effects are actually pretty darn good! The glimpses I got of whatever it was that was in the water gave me chills.

Who the heck is Zak Penn to have the audacity to try something like this?

And when will he do it again?

Personally, I'm looking forward to it.

  ¶ 11:50 AM