Loch Ness Terror (2008)

There is only one thing you need to know about this film – Loch Ness Terror is set in the town of Pike Island on Lake Superior. Yep. Not Scotland. If you feel the need to read on, please do, but that truly sets the tone.

Using the name of Loch Ness and injecting it into an American town full of skeptics, idiots and a b-movie vomiting of unwanted stereotypes, Loch Ness Terror should be taken outside by Trading Standards and shot. There is no terror and it has as much to do with Loch Ness as Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood has anything to do with Ireland.

The plot is incredibly simplistic – somehow, and for no particular reason, a Loch Ness-style monster has decided to appear and start killing people in the world’s largest freshwater lake. Naturally cryptozoologist James Murphey (Brian Krause) happens to be kicking around, a man who once saw Scotland’s Nessie eat his father and give him a rather fetching, and clearly fake, facial scar. Violence ensues, as does some hilariously bad CGI, and more people die. After much skepticism the town sheriff Karen Riley (Carrie Genzel) finally believes James and they set about devising a plot to kill the beast. Of course, it’s never that simple, and it looks like Nessie’s had children…

This is in the territory of Lake Placid 2 and all the Anaconda sequels, except without the knowing cheesy nods and cameos from has-been actors to keep the audience faintly entertained. Instead it remains mind-bendingly boring rather than becoming a riotous laugh. From the director of The Sea Beast and Android Apocalypse, however, no one is going into this film expecting a truly terrifying horror, yet sadly Ziller’s experience does not manage to pull this beyond being another extremely poor monster-movie. Literally drowning in cliché, Loch Ness Terror ticks all the expected character boxes with disbelieving cops, crazy old men who aren’t actually that crazy, handsome heroic scientists, copulating camping youths that should have signs saying “eat me, I’m having sex”, that kind of thing. Ziller also shares writing credits, featuring such choice lines as “The little lake that you love so dearly is about to become a feeding ground for a race of carnivorous prehistoric reptiles”, so tragically Loch Ness Terror is a laughable affair that only the truly dedicated or thoroughly inebriated would choose to watch until the end.

Occasionally there are fun parts, like when the water-bound plesiosaur children decide to rampage across open ground in a waddling, hilarious frenzy of death, but these moments are few and short. There are hundreds of other movies that do this better, and for the first time in my life, I suggest watching an Anaconda sequel instead… especially the one featuring David Hasselhoff.

Overall you know exactly what to expect from Loch Ness Terror – no Loch Ness, no terror, bad CGI and every cliché under the monster-movie sun. Avoid.

Rating: