Customer Reviews

Loch Ness Terror

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This is a really fun monster movie. The filming, script, the camera work, and the acting are all really decent for a low-budget monster flick. The computer loch ness monster isn't so bad either in a cartoony way.

The story is about man that is a cryptozoologoist and studies unknown species, but specifically he's looking for the loch ness monster that he witnessed killed his dad when he was a small child. Now, a grown man, he's hunting the monster as it attacks a town of locals near the lake. We also meet the main character, a teenaged boy that runs a bait shop who's just out of highschool, we meet his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend, her new boyfriend's friend, some foreign exchange student chick, as well as the main teen guy's mom who's also the town sheriff. Danger and computerized blood ensues.

I recommend this movie for all people that like low-budget horror films.

A pretty much by-the-numbers "monster of the week" production, Loch Ness Terror provides a small amount of suspense along with some unintended humor. We do get to find out why the monster is only sometimes found at Loch Ness as it apparently summers in Lake Superior. There are some baby Nessies in this one as well as the mother and they manage to (surprise surprise) put a group of teenagers in jeopardy. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who doesn't like low budget creature features or anyone who hasn't seen at least one movie made for the Sci-Fi channel.

in the 1970's a couple of people find an egg in Lochness Lake. While they have it out of water discussing where to take it to x-ray it, the actual Lochness Monster comes out of the water for her egg and kills all but the kid of the group.

Now 30 years later or so, the kid has grown up and now hunts down the Lochness Monster which has somehow relocated itself to a lake in Michigan, (USA. They say there are caverns in the lakes that join both of them.) Where it is breeding and killing people.

The average group of heroes from a small town combine to hunt it down and make there small home town safe for fishermen and swimmers again.

Overall, it's an ok movie. On the cover it says "the best creature-feature about the Lochness monster to date" ... when you think about it tho, when have you seen a Lochness Monster movie where it's actually a monster that kills?

It's kind of like "Lake Placid" meets "Jurassic Park"... the FX are OK, there not nauseating like "Lake Placid 2".... overall, it's a decent flick, I think it's worth the price of a rental at least.

With the recent spate of monster movies produced by Syfy, it was probably inevitable that the Loch Ness Monster would eventually go on a murderous rampage for our entertainment. In the same way that the X-Files co-opted modern conspiracy theories about aliens, each one of these monster movies pays lip service to prevailing cryptozoology theories. With unimportant details like where the monster came from and why it exists out of the way, the monster can get to the fun part - eating stupid teenagers.

One of the biggest problems with Beyond Loch Ness - and there are many, many problems - is that it takes its own lazy logic much too seriously. We are supposed to believe that the Loch Ness Monster is a plesiosaur, a long-necked water-dwelling dinosaur. We are told that it escapes detection by slipping in and out of underwater tunnels. And that it senses "electrochemical pulses" to see, so if you don't move it can't see you. All three of these statements are repeated with great seriousness and absolutely authority, leaving no room for doubt that the characters could be wrong. And they are so very, very wrong.

Let's start with the subject, shall we? The Loch Ness Monster isn't even in Loch Ness, presumably to keep from having to hire actors with Scottish accents. It isn't a plesiosaur - unless plesiosaurs have heads shaped like Tyrannosaurus Rex complete with a sail on top, claws instead of flippers, and a neck more like a Brontosaurus. This is a dinosaur as envisioned by a five year old. It's hard to imagine it swimming fast enough to outpace a human in the water much less a motorboat.

The tunnels are casually referenced as if everyone knows these massive tunnels must exist underground large enough for a deep-sea dwelling monster to easily navigate. No other species seems to have found these tunnels or navigate between saltwater and freshwater, but never you mind - cryptozoologist James Murphy (Brian Krause, complete with fedora, overcoat, and smoldering cigarette dangling from his lips) has tracked this beast all the way from Loch Ness, where it killed his daddy. So this is as much a Wild West showdown as it is a monster film. Except, you know, the monster doesn't have a gun.

And then there's the whole "dinosaurs can't see movement" meme that Jurassic Park started. Thing is, any dinosaur with binocular vision (like Nessie in this movie) should be able to see just fine. There's also the little matter of other senses like smell. Beyond Loch Ness takes this weakness to laughable extremes, such that clever victims stand still in the midst of baby Loch Ness Monsters milling about. We know that the monsters can't see people standing still because, of course, we have the Monstercam (TM). The Loch Ness Monstercam is a first-person point of view of some guy wearing goggles with water on them. At one point, victims stop moving in a tree and we can see via Monstercam that they become invisible to the monsters...but the tree, somehow, is still visible.

The monster is more fleshed out than the characters. Murphy carries an arsenal to kill the beast, including a high-powered rifle that fires poison-tipped (!) bullets, a sonic stun gun that only works in water, and a directed energy weapon that heats the monster up until its flesh boils. What is it with the Syfy channel movies where every battle with a monster also features some kind of weird weapon technology?

The characters aren't just unsympathetic, they're unsympathetic to each other. When the line-spouting codger is horribly mangled by baby Nessie at the end of the film, nobody notices he's dead. Instead, the two stupid teens smooch, the pretty heroine and our Wild West cryptozoologist hint at romance, and the movie ends.

In the very beginning of the film, the Loch Ness Monster eats someone wearing boots, and a second later a pair of legs flop to the ground, sans boots. That sums up this film: it's simply lazy.

Most movies featuring the Loch Ness Monster set the film At Loch Ness, or at least in Scotland. Not so "Loch Ness Terror" (also known as "Beyond Loch Ness,") which finds Nessie and her brood of plesiosaurs in Lake Superior. The film actually does open in Loch Ness in a scene done in sepiatone to let us know it's in the distant past (well the seventies, anyway.) A scientific expedition looking for plesiosaurs finds a giant egg. The eggnapping makes Nessie, the mother of all plesiosaurs, beyond mad and she proceeds to demolish the entire party, except one young boy, who sees his father killed and vows vengeance.

In the present day Nessie has moved to Lake Superior, and mysterious things start happening. An ultra-cool cryptozoologist, James Murphy (Brian Krause,) shows up to find out what's going on and befriends Josh Riley (Niall Matter,) a young bait shop entrepreneur. Josh's mom, Karen Riley (Carrie Genzel) is the town sheriff; rounding out the principals are the stunningly gorgeous Zoe (Amber Borycki,) Josh's ex-flame, who is now dating Josh's nemesis, spoiled rich brat Brody (Sebastian Gacki.)

Josh's crazy uncle kicks the whole thing off by tying to photograph Nessie with conceptually nasty results, but fairly laughable execution. Murphy starts parading a bunch of high-tech anti-plesiosaur weaponry to the other cast members, and has a lot of pseudo-scientific dialogue about the magnetic properties of minerals, although he also says "disorientated," where most scientists would use the more commonly acceptable "disoriented." (Just a pet peeve of mine...now back to the review.) We learn lots of interesting facts along the way. For instance: an alligator can rip a car door off ("I saw it on the news,") and that plesiosaurs can be fooled by standing very still. It's all very scientific.

Zoe and Brody (and a couple of extras) go to an island in the middle of Lake Superior where Nessie has her nest, unknown to them. Their romantic camping trip is abruptly terminated, and Josh becomes alarmed when they don't return. Before it's over with Josh gets to be a hero and battle a plesiosaur with a shovel in a coal chute, while we get to see the loathsome Brody become the lunch buffet for a bunch of baby plesiosaurs. Murphy reveals himself to be the kid who watched his dad get munched by Nessie years ago (obviously,) and has a plan for Nessie involving a Russian electromagnetic pulse gun, and a huge hypodermic needle of cyanide. He also answers the central puzzler of the whole movie: why and how is Nessie in Michigan? It turns out that plesiosaurs like to breed in safe and deep inland lakes, and they pass through the earth's crust using deep trans-arctic tunnels that connect the bodies of water! At the end (no, I won't tell you how it happens,) there are two neat couples left: Josh and Zoe (who are instantly back in love) and Karen and James, who wants to settle down by the lake. Nobody could see that coming I bet.

The movie is ridiculous, but far better than many of its B-movie brethren. The script is decent for what it is, the acting (notably Krause and Matter) is especially good for a film in this genre, and the CGI plesiosaurs aren't the worst computer graphics I've ever seen, though the plesiosaur puppets are quite ridiculous. Overall for a cheap action monster movie, "Loch Ness Terror" is a fun choice.

Sea monsters invade Lake Superior and, taking a page from JAWS, begin killing campers and fishermen. Town sheriff (and single mom) teams up with a Big Game Hunter to kill the sea monsters.

The story is nothing special, but that's not how you judge a monster film, is it?

The CGI monsters are surprisingly good for low-budget horror fare, especially since there are so many of them. And there's a very nice decapitation of your typical stupid coed camper.

The location doesn't look like Lake Superior -- the film was shot in Canada's British Columbia -- but one can overlook that.

Some weird aspects to this film:

* The Internet Movie Database says the actress playing the sheriff/single mom was 37 when this film was shot. The actor playing her son was 28. I checked, because she didn't LOOK like she could be his mom.

Casting a 37-year-old as mom to a 28-year-old shows that ageism is still rampant in Hollywood.

Yeah, maybe we're supposed to think the actor is 20 or so, and maybe we're supposed to think the actress is...a good-looking fortysomething? But she STILL looks too young to be his mother.

SPOILER ALERT:

* At film's end, 5 people attack the sea monsters. The sheriff mom, her Big Game hunter/nascent boyfriend, the son, his girlfriend, and some Old Deputy.

If you've seen enough horror films, you just KNOW that Old Deputy is dead meat. He's the odd man out, only there to be killed. And he is.

But here's the weird part:

The Old Deputy was killed up in the hills, away from the Other Four. After the Four kill the last of the sea monsters, they break into smiles and "head for home!"

Huh?

NOBODY thinks to ASK or WONDER -- WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OLD DEPUTY?

They don't know his fate, and don't care. It's like he didn't even exist. They just smile and walk home.

That's sloppy scripting. The characters ignore the Deputy's death because the audience is expected to ignore the Deputy's dead -- but that's NOT how the CHARACTERS would behave.

That's just one example of poor character scripting. There are others. The characterization is not great; full of clichés and silly behavior.

But the monsters and violence look good, plus there's genuine suspense when the characters are threatened or run. I enjoyed the film.

LOCH NESS TERROR is a pleasant diversion for forgiving horror fans.

I enjoy all types of SciFi and Fantasy movies, and some that are considered B grade are quite entertaining. This is in that category. Although not as good as Lake Placid this certainly beats the second one as another reviewer mentioned. The story, acting, effects (this is were many fall short), and music are well done. The movie remains suspenseful even after revealing the monster. This creature isn't at all friendly as shown in some movies for children. When mangled bodies and rumors of a large creature start showing up along a lake in the United States, they arouse the interest of a young scientist. As the body count goes up he is enlisted by the sheriff to track down the cause. Suspicious of a large alligator they use high tech gear to track and try to kill it. Cast members include faces from Eureka and Stargate SG-1. Well worth a look. I saw this on the SciFi channel and immediately came here to order it since it is definitely a grade above many in this genre. If you enjoyed this catch The Beast (Two-Disc Special Extended Version).

CA Luster

As far as B movies go this one is pretty good. I love these types of movies though. Its more to laugh at, than to be affraid. In my opinion i'd rather watch B monster movies all day long, rather than stupid top graded slasher movie.

Yeah, I don't think weirded is a word but it describes how I felt watching Brian Krause (TV's "Charmed") being a nessie hunter. I'm obsessed with nessie for some reason so I love movies like this. It was a good movie, Brian Krause made it better and I thought it was a decent movie. (I'm not very good at reviews - so sorry!) It wasn't what I expected but I wasn't disappointed. So to sum it all up - WEIRDED OUT, NOT WHAT EXPECTED THOUGH NOT DISAPPOINTED, DECENT MOVIE

Everyone else has the details. i enjoyed seeing Stargate alums Don Davis (rip) and Paul McGillion in it. More than miffed that any 'scientist' would hunt down and slaughter an endangered species in an isolated area where you could get the people out and save the species' babies at least (even in a monster movie). Annoyed by the end where a major character gets killed and no one notices.