Incident at Loch Ness

Think This Is Spinal Tap meets The Blair Witch Project meets The Art of the Fart. Only you don’t understand it’s a joke at first, unless you’ve read about it. For the first half hour it all seems reasonable enough. The great Werner Herzog is planning to make a documentary, not about Nessie, but about the belief people have in chimeras like that. At the same time, a film crew is following him around, making a documentary about him. Everybody plays himself, these are all real people. Things only gradually begin to smell, and then they get stranger, and goofier still, and by the time Nessie was battering the boat and the craven producer was abandoning ship and leaving everyone to their fates I was laughing a lot. You can’t really pinpoint the place where you are sure this is a spoof … and it’s actually a lot more complicated than a spoof, anyway.

I read a few reviews. The critic for the Globe and Mail was incensed that she was initially taken in. Lighten up, idiot! The New York Times thought it tried to segue into real horror at the end. You missed the point, lamebrain! The movie was at its funniest precisely when it looked most like Blair Witch, that vastly overrated bit of hokum. You thought he was trying to scare you? Get over yourself! This movie is about reality shows, and Hollywood bullshit, and about five levels of deadpan looniness, and it all worked for me. I recommend it highly.