Director – Paul Ziller, Screenplay – Jason Bourque & Paul Ziller, Story – Andrew Sands, Producer – Lindsay MacAdam, Photography – Anthony Mechie, Music – Pinar Toprak, Visual Effects/Animation – Lux Visual Effects (Supervisor – Kevin Little), Special Effects Supervisor – Al Benjamin, Prosthetics/Makeup Effects – Flesh and Fantasy Make-Up Effects Inc., Production Design – Paul McCulloch. Production Company – Insight Film Studio Ltd..
Cast
Brian Krause (James Murphy), Niall Matter (Josh Riley), Carrie Genzel (Karen Riley), Amber Borycki (Zoe), Don S. Davis (Neil Chapman), Sebastian Gacki (Brody), Donnelly Rhodes (Uncle Sean), Neil Denis (Chad), Paul McGillion (Michael Murphy), Sam Laird (James Murphy 12 Years), Serinda Swan (Caroleena)
Plot
In 1976, twelve-year old James Murphy is on the shores of Loch Ness with his scientist father when he witnesses the Loch Ness Monster rise. His father and a colleague are devoured. In the present day, teenager Josh Riley works at a bait shop in the town of Aspern on the shores of Lake Superior. James arrives in town, now a seasoned cryptozoologist. He hires Josh to be his guide and take him out on the lake in his boat. At the same time, Josh’s mother Karen, the local head of police, is dealing with a series of deaths around the town. James tries to impress upon them that they are dealing with a plesiosaur that has come there from Loch Ness. Meanwhile, Josh’s ex-girlfriend Zoe is out on the island in the lake with friends when they are attacked by the plesiosaurs.
Belief in The Loch Ness Monster has become widespread ever since the first sightings in 1933 and persists to this – indeed, has become a major tourist attraction – despite the lacking 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), and the better-budgeted likes of Loch Ness (1996) and The Water Horse (2007). Not to mention the monster making odd cameos in films such as 7 Faces of Dr Lao (1964), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), which makes the claim that monster was Jack the Ripper and Doctor Who’s The Terror of the Zygons (1976) where it was an alien monster.
Beyond Loch Ness offers up the bizarre oddity of a Loch Ness Monster film that takes place in Canada! We get a prologue set at Loch Ness in 1976 where the young James (Sam Laird) watches as his father is killed by the monster. The action then skips forward to the present on the shores of Lake Superior where we meet the grown-up James (Brian Krause) who is now a cryptozoologist.
The film justifies the move to Canada with talk about access to the lake via underground tunnels, although it should be noted that Lake Superior is some two thousand miles! distance from the Atlantic. (Furthermore, despite being set on the shores of Lake Superior, which is located in Ontario, the film was actually shot on the other side of the country in British Columbia). The Loch Ness Monster is also identified as a plesiosaur, allowing the film to fall into the fad for CGI Dinosaur Films that we had following Jurassic Park (1993). (Donnelly Rhodes at one point refers to the dinosaur as coming from the Mesopotoic Era, where you suspect he means the Mesozoic, although this can perhaps be justified in that he is playing a conspiracy theory nut where small matters like facts are clearly not his strong suit).
The Canadian Loch Ness Monster attacks
Beyond Loch Ness suffers from the usual generally competent but so-so digital effects of the Syfy Channel movie of this era. There is a fairly good opening where we see the kid’s father snatched by the Loch Ness Monster and bitten in half and another scientist attacked – fairly strong stuff for a tv movie where seeing kids traumatised is usually a no-no. The middle of the film follows a fairly predictable path for these films, especially with the young nerdy teen hero (Niall Matter) having an ex-girlfriend (Amber Borycki) and her bullying jock boyfriend (Sebastian Gacki) and others trapped on an island, which naturally becomes an opportunity for Matter to prove himself and win her back. The middle contains some reasonable ferocious scenes with the monsters where the digital effects rise to the occasion passably well.
Canadian director Paul Ziller has made a number of low-budget action films, thrillers and genre entries. These include:- the slasher film Pledge Night/A Hazing in Hell (1988), the serial killer film Breaking Point (1993), Virtual Seduction (1995), the mutant fish film Snakehead Terror (2004), the sun goes nova film Solar Attack (2005), the insects amok film Swarmed (2005), Android Apocalypse (2006), the horror film Ba’al (2008), the monster movie Troglodyte (2008), Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon (2008), Polar Storm (2009), Ice Quake (2010), Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010), Collision Earth (2011), Garden of Evil (2011), Ghost Storm (2011), Iron Golem (2011), Seeds of Destruction/The Terror Beneath (2011) and The Philadelphia Experiment (2012).
