‘Incident at Loch Ness’: How Werner Herzog Hilariously Proved He’s In On The Joke
How Did Herzog End Up Chasing Nessie?
Most documentary filmmakers want you to forget they’re even there. Not Werner Herzog. His voice, his face, his drifting thoughts about chaos and beauty — they’re half the reason people hit play. He doesn’t just direct. He becomes the story whether he’s tracking wild penguins or arguing with grizzly bears.
By the early 2000s, Herzog’s reputation had grown into this mystical thing. People worshipped him as an existential genius. Some called him reckless. Some thought he bent the truth so far it snapped. He didn’t care. He talked about something called “ecstatic truth.” If facts got in the way, too bad. If the audience felt something real, then that was the truth he wanted.
Then came Incident at Loch Ness. A prank. A puzzle. A mockumentary that showed maybe Herzog wasn’t the stone-faced philosopher people thought he was. He could laugh at himself too.
What Even Happens In ‘Incident at Loch Ness’?
The setup is deliciously weird. Zak Penn, best known then as a screenwriter, plays himself. He’s “producing” a Herzog documentary called Herzog in Wonderland. The big idea? Herzog heads to Scotland to solve the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster.
But this “production” is getting filmed by yet another crew. So you’re watching a movie about people making a movie about Herzog making a movie. Penn pulls every stunt possible to mess with Herzog. He hires Kitana Baker, an actual model, to pose as a sonar expert. She jumps in the freezing loch in an American flag bikini. Nobody buys it.
Penn even rigs up a fake Nessie to try and fool Herzog. The film pretends the monster might actually be real too. The line between the dumb hoax and the accidental truth gets so blurry you start to wonder if Herzog himself is being tricked.
Except he’s not. He knows. And watching him react is half the fun.
Was Herzog Really In On The Joke?
Herzog’s performance here is one for the ages. He never raises his voice. He doesn’t wink at the camera. He just plays himself — the same dead-serious guy from Grizzly Man. He grumbles about Penn’s nonsense but never explodes. He delivers lines that sound like his real narrations. Even when he’s improvising, it feels scripted in that Herzog way.
The cast is full of real people too. The cinematographer, the sound guy, all pros playing themselves. Kitana Baker, the bikini sonar specialist, doesn’t hide who she is. The whole thing feels like it could break at any moment. But it doesn’t.
Journalists even believed it at first. They ran stories saying Herzog was really out hunting Nessie. He never broke character. He let the myth do the work.
Why Didn’t ‘Incident at Loch Ness’ Blow Up Bigger?
Mockumentaries come and go. Some go all in with goofy punchlines. Others get big laughs by being over the top. Incident at Loch Ness doesn’t do either. It’s subtle. It’s dry. The jokes slip in like quiet side comments. If you miss them, that’s on you.
It shifts tones too. It starts as Hollywood satire, poking fun at fake producers and sleazy tricks. Then it slides into almost a thriller. There’s an actual sense of danger when they’re out on the water. Maybe that’s why people didn’t latch onto it. It’s not exactly Spinal Tap. But it’s smarter than it has any right to be.
And at the center of all of it is Herzog, proving his harshest critics right in the strangest way. Maybe he is always performing. Maybe that’s the point.
What Did Herzog Say About It All?
One of the best parts comes near the end. Herzog stands there, staring into the misty loch, and says he regrets ever starting the project. He didn’t want to find Nessie. And now that he maybe has, it feels cheap. “The truth was not ecstatic,” he says. “It was vulgar and pointless.”
But for anyone who loves Incident at Loch Ness, that last line lands the hardest. The real truth of the film is that Herzog, the myth, the riddle, is in on it. He knows how people see him. He knows people roll their eyes when he talks about ecstatic truth. And he knows exactly how to play that for a laugh.
He’s not just the voice. Or the face. Or the wandering philosopher on screen. He’s the biggest trick in his own bag. And he’s fine with you knowing it.
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