Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel) is growing up during the 1940s in Scotland without his father who is away at war. He misses him deeply, and his mother Anne (Emily Watson) worries about his mental health. Things take an upbeat turn when Angus gets a new companion. It is not a dog or a cat but a dinosaur-like creature that hatches from an egg he finds in the giant lake nearby known as Loch Ness. Angus tries to hide the creature but must turn to his older sister Kirstie (Priyanka Xi) and Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin), a new handyman, for assistance. Keeping the animal in the bathtub (he loves the water) is less difficult than feeding his voracious appetite. Things get much more complicated when a band of British soldiers are stationed on the family's estate. Captain Hamilton (David Morrissey) sees it as his duty to protect Loch Ness from being used by Nazi submarines.

Jay Russell, who directed Tuck Everlasting and My Dog Skip does a fine job keeping The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep from turning into either a sentimental story or a monster saga. He wisely mines the connections to the film favorite about an animal alien, E. T. The Extraterrestrial, enabling us to empathize with the water horse which Angus names Crusoe. Another way of keeping the story real is the use of Brian Cox as an old timer in present-day Scotland who is telling the adventure to a tourist couple asking questions about the Loch Ness monster.


Special DVD features include deleted scenes; The Water Horse: Virtual Crusoe Game, and six featurettes: "Creating Crusoe," "Myths and Legends," "Setting the Scene," "The Characters," "The Story," and "Water Works: Creating The Water Horse."