INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS: Monster Mania
By JEREMIAH KIPP
The line between hoax and reality is blurred in Zak Penn’s directorial debut, INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS (opening September 17 in New York and LA, with other cities to follow; see
http://www.incidentatlochness.com for more dates). This film purports to be a documentary account of Werner Herzog’s failed attempt to make a movie about the famed Scottish lake, “exploring the origin and necessity of the monster” rather than searching for the creature itself. The making of Herzog’s movie goes strangely awry, and the tone of the movie falls somewhere between the eerie “you are there” vibe of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the broad comic strokes of Christopher Guest’s THIS IS SPINAL TAP.
If the events documented in LOCH NESS are to be believed, Herzog and his team encountered paranormal phenomena that forced Herzog, for the first time in his adventurous career, to halt production on a movie. Remember, this is a man who has achieved notoriety for filming in some of the most dangerous conditions on earth, including making a movie inside a live volcano. But what happened at Loch Ness is apparently too bizarre for even the mighty Herzog to handle.
Penn, a successful Hollywood screenwriter with such films as X2 and SUSPECT ZERO on his résumé, was the mastermind behind INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS. “This movie was independently financed and put together,” Penn says. “It was helpful that I had built up many industry connections at this point in my career, which made things much easier than if I had been a novice. But most of the people involved in the project came on because of Werner Herzog and their desire to work with him.”
