UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Neil Welch This is an absolutely generic monster movie starring Brian Krause, once a stalwart TV second fiddle, and now taking up the mantle of C Thomas Howell as king of the DTVs.The plot is idiotic drivel - the Loch Ness Monster, presumably unable to deal with the Scottish National Party's desire for an independent Scotland, emigrates to the Great Lakes, accompanied by its brood. And there they find the feeding good, as long as it's people. Cue lots of running round screaming and Brian Krause as a land-bound Captain Ahab.But we're not watching for plot or acting, are we? We're watching for monsters and killing. Well, there's quite a lot of both (and the killing is very gory, with lots of bone and guts and dismemberment, albeit also with lots of very very red blood and little credibility). The monsters themselves - well, there is much more footage of CGI monsters than I would have expected, the animation is better than I would have expected, and they are often integrated into the background plates much better than I would have expected. Not perfectly, you understand - far from it! - but I have seen this sort of thing done much worse.Verdict: tolerable monster movie.

Bloodwank Ah, the Loch Ness Monster. One of the hardy perennials of cryptozoology, yet figures in a tiny quantity of movies compared with Bigfoot or any other mystery beast. It was inevitable that the Sci-Fi Channel would use ol' Nessie in one of their original films, what is surprising about this one is that its actually quite fun and handled with a measure of skill. It's a standard tale of a lake plagued by attacks from a mysterious beast, which turns out to be a plesiosaur that has managed to relocate from Scotland to Canada, causing bait shop owner Josh, his mother Karen and vengeful cryptozoologist James Murphy to team up to save the day. The film moves at a good clip, we have an arresting flashback to the death of James' parents to set the scene, then the feed of attacks is pretty regular until a tense final showdown on an uninhabited island. The design of the creature is quite good, it bears little resemblance to fossil records but is a good sized lumbering toothy malfeasant complete with cool head crest and even a semblance of musculature and effort put into its skin colouring. Make no mistake, its still quite obviously CGI, but a colossal advance from the likes of Cerberus or Sabretooth. As well as the effective (well, much more than usual for this sort of film) creature, an unexpected verve is put into the action and the creatures general antics, with the climax especially notable in this regard. Its not that exciting, but the fact that it achieves any measure of excitement at all is rather pleasing. There's even a modicum of OK gore, with little in the way of CGI to it. Regrettably the acting and writing fail to stick to the same level of the direction and effects, everybody here talks and acts exactly the way characters in Sci-Fi originals are expected too. Niall Matter is a vapid younger lead, Carrie Genzel conveys barely a jot of authority as his sheriff mother, most of the rest are just there. Brian Krause appears to be the "name" star here (well he was in Charmed) and does a Clint Eastwood impression, he seems to be having fun but is a bit laughable. The writing is as stolid as can be imagined, po faced, unintentionally amusing, unneeded exposition, all that sort of thing. Still, this is much, much better than expected, probably the best Sci-Fi Channel release I've come across and recommended if you dig their output in general. Never "good" exactly then, and not memorable or all that worthwhile, but I could bear it, which is more than can be said for stuff like the aforementioned Cerberus or the space bear "epic" Savage Planet. Heck, its even better than the hysterical Sabretooth! A semi satisfied 5/10 from me then.

Paul Andrews Beyond Loch Ness starts at Loch Ness, Scotland in 1976 where a scientific expedition are attacked & killed by the legendary Loch Ness monster, the only survivor is James Murphy (James Laird) the twelve year old son of one of the scientists who manages to hide. Jump to Lake Superior in the small American town of Ashburn during the Present Day where a now adult James Murphy (Brian Krause) a cryptozoologist turns up after a local man reports seeing a monster on the lake, James hires local fish bait shop owner Josh Reiley (Niall Matter) to take him out to explore the lake where he finds several huge subterranean caves. James quickly realises the Loch Ness monster has ended up in Lake Superior & has started eating the locals, out for revenge & to prevent more death James teams up with local Sheriff Karen Reiley (Carrie Genzel) to take the beast down once & for all & save the town!Also more commonly known under the title Loch Ness Terror which is what I saw it under this Canadian production was co-written & directed by Paul Ziller & I was pleasantly surprised by just how good this was, sure it's no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but it's decent enough & far better than the usual abysmal Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' originals that they love so much. The film has a good pace to it, it moves along briskly enough to keep one entertained although one has to say that it does start to get a little dull towards the end as overall there's really not much to it. Basically some guy & the clichéd local small town Sheriff hunt down some monster & that's really all there is too it, while watching Beyond Loch Ness it felt like a cheap rip-off of the marvellous Lake Placid (1999) & in that regard it comes across alright. Unfortunately the entertaining black humour of Lake Placid is absent & overall this takes itself a bit too seriously but as far as 'Craeture Features' go this impressed me & believe me I've seen loads of the things over the years.One notorious aspect of these Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Features' are the awful CGI computer effects that look like they were done on a home PC, examples include Ogre (2008) & 100 Million BC (2008) which has truly some of the worst CGI monsters ever to grace the screen so I was very surprised to see the CGI in Beyond Loch Ness was as good as it was. Sure it can't compete with the likes of Jurassic Park (1993), Starship Troopers (1997) or King Kong (2005) but the effects actually hold up pretty well, the creature design is good, the animation is fine although the makers tend to just show shots of the creatures long neck & head rather than it's entire body & the CGI is also relatively detailed & textured. Again much, much better than the usual embarrassment the Sci-Fi Channel serve up. There's some reasonable gore too, from severed limbs to bitten off heads to decent amounts of blood splatter this is a lot redder than most Sci-Fi Channel offerings.Filmed in Vancouver in British Columbia in Canada although set in the US & Scotland. The Scottish accents are not the most convincing but overall the acting is fine, most of the cast are TV stars appearing in stuff like Stargate, Battlestar Galactica & Charmed.Beyond Loch Ness is much better than the usual Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' & taken on it's own it's alright if a little underdeveloped & runs out of steam at around the hour mark. Much, much better than I expected.

Kent Rasmussen I watched most of this film using my DVR to fast-forward through the early parts, so I missed the explanation of how Nessie gets from Scotland to North America. The more interesting question is *why* she would make the trip. After all, she and her ancestors seem to have done fine in Loch Ness for untold centuries. (Incidentally, Loch Ness is a freshwater lake–contrary to what one person posting here says. Some "lochs" are indeed saltwater sea inlets; however, Loch Ness isn't that kind.) I've enjoyed watching science fiction monster films since the Golden Age of Radiation during the 1950s, when I must have seen every film featuring dinosaurs released from the depths of the sea by atom bomb testing or mutant giant insects and mollusks running amok. I can still enjoy many of those films, but I've not yet been able to make a habit of watching the Sci-Fi Channel's made-for-TV films. Apart from their weak scripts and dreary acting, the films are hard to watch because of their almost uniformly poor CGI. Other people have commented here that the special effects in BEYOND LOCH NESS are a cut above the Sci-Fi Channel's usual standard, and I think that's probably true. There are moments in this film when it's almost possible to believe that the dinosaurs are real. However, those moments are both few and brief. A general problem with this film is that the dinosaurs are on the screen far too long; the longer we look at them, the phonier they appear. Wouldn't it make more sense to have less dinosaur footage and to make the effects in the footage that is used better? There are scenes in this film in which Nessie waddles across dry land like a duck; I almost expected it to quack.Another problem I find with this film may be more a matter of my taste than an objective criticism of the film–namely its emphasis on gore. Is it absolutely necessary to show graphic images of people being bitten in half and chewed up? Older films are often much more frightening for the off-camera violence and carnage that they suggest. Nowadays, I suppose, it's necessary to show audiences the blood–and lots of it. It's a shame that audiences are so desensitized that they can't be frightened unless they see closeups of people being dismembered and eaten. Personally, I find graphic gore more repulsive than scary. Moreover, in BEYOND LOCH NESS, the gore often merely looks ludicrously unrealistic.I have one final question about this film that another person here has already raised: What does become of the deputy sheriff at the end of the film? Is it possible that a scene accounting for his fate was cut, leaving an awkward continuity problem? Oh, well. The same thing has happened in far better films, such as THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI (exactly what is Jack Hawkins trying to explain to the Burmese women as they leave the river in that film?).