The Lake Michigan Monster is a choppy, charming home-made comedy about... well, the hunt for the titular monster. It covers for its limitations (a $7000 budget, cast of non-actors, etc.) with a very brisk script that keeps both gags and non-sequiturs coming at a regular clip and a style that mimics early black and white movies.
Captain Seafield (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who also directs, co-writes and co-produces) is a relentlessly upbeat oddball who has sworn revenge on the beast that killed his father. To that end he gathers a team - a weapons expert (Erik West), a seaman (Daniel Long) and a sonar specialist (Beulah Peters as the excellently named Nedge Pepsi). They go through several poorly thought-out plans until a series of bizarre tragedies tear the team apart and force Seafield to continue the hunt on his own. Or rather, with unconventional help.
The plot really is just an excuse to deliver a near-constant stream of absurdist jokes and bizarre twists. Along breakneck editing by Mike Cheslik (who also co-writes, did effects and co-produces) and a filming style that's aggressively artificial and entirely too happy to throw in visual curveballs, things don't ever get a chance to stagnate. Which is good, because while there's a ton of jokes and visual gags, only a few are solid - this is more of a mildly amusing movie than a funny one. It's very likeable, though.
Style-and-substance-wise, it's heavily indebted to the films of Guy Maddin in both style and substance - though it's nowhere near as stylish, funny or weird as them. Still, it's slightly funnier and far more playful with form than Here Comes Hell (which came out the year after this); And taken on its own terms, it's an enthusiastic, enjoyably goofball movie.
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