UK. 2023.
Crew
Director/Screenplay/Producer – Tyler-James/Tyler James, Photography – Vince Knight, Music – James Cox, Visual Effects – Steve Clarke & Paul Knott, Special Effects – Bethany Smith. Production Company – Dark Abyss Productions.
Cast
May Kelly (Ava), Dan Gittens (Bryce), Becca Hirani (Lara), Beatrice Fletcher (Natalya), Matthew Baunsgard (Travis), Rob Kirley (Ewan), Howard Davey (Drake), Geidre Jackyte (Simone), Tara McGowran (Tara), Mike Kelson (Ray), Lila Lasso (Willow)
Plot
Various people are hired to crew a ship to go in search of a submarine that has been sunken at sea. As the mission gets underway, some of them realise that others among the group are working with a different purpose. As a dive is attempted on the submarine, they are attacked by a monster. It is revealed that this is the Loch Ness Monster and the other group have been sent to capture it. Meanwhile, Ewan is infected and gives birth to an insect-like creature from his back, which proceeds to run amok through the ship.
The Loch Ness Horror was the third film for Tyler James, often written as Tyler-James, although not on the credits here. James/Tyler-James has also directed Deadly Waters (2015), Dinosaur Prison (2023), Crocodile Swarm (2023), Monsternado (2023), Dinosaur Hotel 3 (2024), Mega Twister (2024), Sunfall (2024) and Tsunami Sharks (2024). In addition, James has also produced a number of low-budget genre films for prolific British director/producer Scott Jeffrey/Scott Chambers. Some accounts around the web say that Tyler James is a pseudonym for Jeffrey/Chambers and frequent collaborator Rhys Frake-Waterfield, best known of recent as the people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), while the cast line-up certainly features a number of actors familiar to Jeffrey’s films.
Belief in The Loch Ness Monster has become widespread ever since the first sightings in 1933 and persists to this day – indeed, the loch has become a major tourist attraction in Scotland – despite the lack of anything resembling hard proof of any monster. There have been a number of Loch Ness Monster films over the years. These include the likes of The Secret of the Loch (1934), What a Whopper (1961), Legend of Loch Ness (1976), The Loch Ness Horror (1982), Nessie (1985), Beneath Loch Ness (2001), Incident at Loch Ness (2004), Beyond Loch Ness (2008), and the better-budgeted likes of Loch Ness (1996) and The Water Horse (2007).
For a Loch Ness Monster film, The Loch Ness Horror is a considerable oddity. It is not even set on Loch Ness but on the open sea, although we are specifically told that the party are facing the Loch Ness Monster. In actuality, Loch Ness is six miles inland from the nearest coastline of Scotland. However, it does feed out to the sea via the River Ness so it is theoretically possible that the monster could move in and out between loch and the open sea. On the other hand, the film does nothing to explain or justify this. This is not the first Loch Ness Monster film that doesn’t actually take place at Loch Ness – Beyond Loch Ness took place in Canada.
The most bizarre aspect though is when Rob Kirley is infected by the monster and then sprouts an Alien (1979)-styled chestburtster out of his back (a backburster I guess you would have to call it) that is an insect-like creature that scuttles through the ship and emerges to attack people. It is difficult stretching your mind around the idea of a Loch Ness Monster film that suddenly turns into an Alien-copy with everybody hunting an insect creature.
There are definite corners that have been cut in the budgetary department. The Loch Ness Monster effects are passable, largely due to all the scenes being filmed at night or underwater, allowing the appearances of the monster to be masked. Much better is the appearance of the backburtser creature, where the effects are quite good. On the other hand, when it comes to the scenes where the diver descends in the shark cage, there is no sense that the cage is actually underwater – no bubbles, no refraction through water, just someone in a diving suit in a red lit cage.
On the plus side, The Loch Ness Horror gives the impression that the filmmakers actually went on board a ship to shoot. Unlike other low-budget films set at sea – one immediately thinks of The Asylum’s Megalodon (2018) set aboard a World War II relic being passed off as a modern US Navy vessel – the ship here is all cramped corridors and bulkheads jutting with machinery that gives the impression of actually being on board. Rather amusing is seeing how little Tyler-James has studied the logistics of how such a mission would occur. Rather than anybody who looks as though they have marine experience, the ships’ crew is comprised of girls in often revealing tops or else armed tough guys. Not to mention the fact that group sets out to capture the Loch Ness Monster outfitted only with a dive cage, although some leftover missiles are later coincidentally discovered aboard the ship.
Trailer here