Incident at Loch Ness (2004)

The Story

Director Werner Herzog, playing an exaggerated version of himself, sets out to make a serious documentary about the myth of the Loch Ness Monster. A second crew, filming the making of that documentary, quietly captures his own production falling apart around him.

Verdict

Werner Herzog playing an exaggerated, self-parodying version of himself is basically the entire joke, and I found it genuinely funny for most of the runtime. The whole thing is structured as a mockumentary about the making of another mockumentary, following Herzog’s crew as his own supposedly serious Loch Ness documentary quietly falls apart around him, and there’s real cleverness in how far the film commits to that layered conceit. It loses a bit of momentum in the second half, and if you think too hard about the internal logic of who’s actually filming what, it starts to wobble. But nobody else in this genre has attempted anything quite like it, and the sheer novelty of the idea carries it a long way. Really enjoyable, and worth watching twice just to catch what you missed the first time.

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Similar Movies

Willow Creek (2013) A straighter, more sincere take on the same Bigfoot-hunting premise, played entirely for dread instead of comedy. → Go to movie

Digging Up the Marrow (2014) Another film that blurs the line between the documentary crew and the horror they’re supposedly just observing. → Go to movie

Trollhunter (2010) Shares the same deadpan mockumentary tone, just applied to Norwegian folklore instead of a Scottish lake monster. → Go to movie