Short Review: 'Lake Mungo' (2008)

Following well within the wake of post-Blair Witch Project ‘found footage’ wannabes and other faux documentary genre films, Lake Mungo (selected for this years’ After Dark Horrorfest 4) is a local fright film that chose to adopt the somewhat tiresome method of delivery in order to tell a subtle ghost story from the perspective of those mourning a young teenager’s untimely death. It’s undoubtedly one of the few times an Australian genre film has attempted a supernatural tale let alone having it be told through a series of fabricated confessionals and countless grainy home video collections. Luckily, director Joel Anderson’s efforts largely succeed and make for one of the country’s more effective recently released chillers.

Whilst on a picnic with her family, sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker) inexplicably drowns in a near by lake, leaving her family devastated and facing an uncertain future searching for answers. When the Palmers return home they are soon privy to a series of paranormal events, suggesting that Alice may be attempting to contact her loved ones from beyond the grave with secrets they never could have imagined her withholding…

Lake Mungo is a very complex yet also strangely simple movie, incorporating both the clinically calculated structure of the documentary format with the straightforward frankness of a campfire tale to (mostly) victorious results. It operates simultaneously as a terrifically candid expose’ about one family’s ongoing grief and struggle to come to terms with mortality as well as a genuine mystery with a host of deeply mysterious undertones. The suggestive nature of the events surrounding and leading up to Alice’s passing and their increasingly disturbing implications help allure the audience deeper and deeper into the unknown to the point where reason and rationality become blurred and the likelihood of determining a plausible cause of death is instead left up to the viewer’s imagination. Director Anderson’s obvious affection for David Lynch’s seminal TV series Twin Peaks can be seen here in almost every way, right down to the surname of the family in question.

If Lake Mungo were to have any real flaws, however, it would be within the chosen medium of the illusive documentary and the conflicting narrative styles best by both factual and fictional storytelling. Throughout the duration of the movie so much time is spent allowing us to become immersed with the plight of the Palmer family and their longing to find answers to the tragedy at hand, all the while being acutely aware that everything is not as it seems and that a greater force beyond our understanding may indeed be at work. However, as the film reaches its closing quarter and curve ball after curve ball of obscurity has been injected into the plot the movie then decides to make a sudden exit without ever resolving any of its many unanswered questions, thus leaving you high, dry and hanging for closure. Ambiguity is great in film but when you’re asking your audience to become so invested in a story made out to be real when in fact they know all too well it’s anything but…you can’t help but feel a little bit cheated.

Regardless if it falls short in the end, Lake Mungo remains a beautifully atmospheric, unsettling ghost story that consistently puts intelligence before cheap scares - something rarely achieved in the genre, let alone by local filmmakers. The performances are impressively naturalistic, the cinematography moody and the sound design tremendously chilling, all contributing toward one of the best horrors to come out of Oz in the last 10 years. Recommended.



Dir: Joel Anderson
Writer: Joel Anderson
Cast: Talia Zucker, Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Martin Sharpe
Country: Australia
Run Time: 89mins
Rating: M15+