Lake Michigan Monster--Having grown up on the shores of Lake Erie, I've often wondered why nobody has yet made the signature Great Lakes monster movie. So despite a twinge of regional jealousy, I take my hat off to the makers of this very low-budget, very silly spoof, resourcefully shot on cool locations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Muskegon, Michigan.
Seafield, an ebullient nautical sort played by writer-director Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, assembles a sort-of-crack team including a weapons specialist, a Navy veteran and a "sonar individual" to hunt down and destroy the title creature who, he insists, killed his father. Like Wes Anderson's Steve Zissou, Seafield isn't after research or scientific achievement or even profit; he's out for revenge.
Tightly scripted, crisply edited and shot in lovely faux-vintage black and white, the movie starts with facetious sketch-comedy material, amusing enough for a while but probably not sustainable at feature length. Just as you're thinking this may prove a long hour and eighteen minutes, however, the tone shifts, as we get to Seafield's underwater confrontation with the monster, and with his own mysterious past.
With eerie ruins and anglerfish and unsettling yet somehow endearing robed masked ghosts, the movie spins off in its homestretch into a free-associating surrealism that leavens the nuttiness with a weird visual beauty. It's like a combination of Lovecraft, Georges Melies, Cabin Boy and SpongeBob, and it's pretty memorable.
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