Lake Mungo (2008)

 

**This post contains spoilers**

The Story- In 2005, a teenager named Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker) drowns during a swim in a quiet town named Ararat. Alice’s mother, June (Rosie Traynor), her father, Russell (David Pledger), and her, brother Matthew (Martin Sharpe) struggle to move on after her death. 

The Palmers want to live a normal life, but after too many strange events, the family is left with troubling questions about the events leading up to Alice’s death. June turns to a psychic named Ray Kemeny (Steve Jodrell) for help, and the Palmer’s investigation to find the truth leads to a series of shocking revelations.

My Thoughts- Lake Mungo’s documentary style approach to found-footage feels genuinely authentic. You get the feeling you’re actually watching a documentary, with the way everything is presented and setup. The interviews with Alice’s family, friends, and neighbors, and they actually blurred out children’s faces to protect the identity of minors. There’s also the tidbits of information in between each section to explain what’s going on with the story. You really get the feeling an actual team worked hard to put this documentary together. 

I also loved the grainy VHS picture quality with the news reports about Alice’s death. The “footage” in Lake Mungo never looks too clean or polished, and it definitely adds a good sense of realism here. The same thing can be said about Alice’s cell phone footage from her trip to Lake Mungo. At times it’s hard to make out what’s going on, because the picture quality is so poor, but that’s exactly what they were going for. You’re not supposed to be waiting for a big jump scare or an attack. No, you’re watching real footage of a teenage girl panicking. She has to run and escape, so you’re not going to see everything clearly.

The performances? Well, if you’re looking different types of charisma, unique personalities, or showmanship, you won’t find it here. June is a broken and grieving mother, Russell is doing his best to hold it together and be the leader and man of the household, and Matthew is the dejected brother who misses his sister. Ray? He just comes off as a normal guy, who looks like he works a nine to five. I’m actually glad they took this approach with Ray. When they introduced him his a psychic, I thought they would make him out to be an eccentric philosopher type, someone who always speaks in riddles about life and death, but that would’ve been too hokey.

As Alice’s story unfolds, it’s revealed she was keeping a lot of heavy secrets from her family. Alice was involved in a sexual relationship with a neighbor named Brett (Scott Terrill) and his wife, Marissa (Tamara Donnellan), and she actually knew and met with Ray long before Ray met with June, a secret Ray kept from the family. The video footage of the sessions with Ray and Alice really shows you just how much Alice was struggling mentally. She expressed her fears about visions she was having, how she felt about death, and an overwhelming sense of dread she couldn’t get past. Alice basically predicted her own death through her visions and nightmares, and there’s a gut punch, when Alice talks about how her mother wasn’t able to save her in the visions she had.

So what’s going to happen at Lake Mungo? Surely, it’s going to be something BIG, right? With some help from Alice’s boyfriend, it’s revealed Alice buried something near a tree at Lake Mungo, and to make things more bizarre, Alice came face to face with her deformed doppelgänger at Lake Mungo. The doppelgänger resembled Alice’s corpse after she drowned, so something chaotic has to happen? Throughout the movie, there’s footage of an emotionless Alice appearing throughout the Palmer’s house, leading you to believe maybe Alice is not dead, or her ghost is possibly haunting the family. But it’s revealed Matthew faked and set up Alice’s appearances throughout the house.

The Palmer’s found Alice’s phone buried at Lake Mungo, containing the footage of the doppelgänger encounter. The Palmer’s went to Lake Mungo looking for answers and evidence, but they eventually found closure together instead. The doppelgänger wasn’t some vengeful demon or ghost, the family wasn’t chased in the darkness, and there weren’t any scenes with the Palmers hiding from a threat, while they did best to stay quiet and not make any noise. After seeing the footage from Alice’s trip to Lake Mungo, I was expecting this exact scenario, but they stayed true to the documentary presentation, without going into the usual found-footage horror hysteria for a big finale.

Alice’s story is filled with heartache. June found the sex tape with the Brett and Marissa and Alice’s diary in her safe. Just think about how that played out for a second. Alice could’ve easily destroyed that tape to keep it secret, but she wanted her family to find it. And it’s obvious she wanted to keep the video proof of the doppelgänger encounter, so no one would think she was crazy or imagining things out of paranoia.

An inappropriate sexual relationship with adults, a doppelgänger, and visions of your own death? Those are heavy burdens for a kid to carry, and you can see just how badly everything affected Alice in her sessions with Ray. Alice had justifiable reasons for not being able to shake the inescapable dread of dying. She had too much going on in the crucial developmental years of her life, and it’s easy to guess Alice was probably apprehensive about telling her parents about the Brett and Melissa situation out of fear for how they would’ve reacted.

Lake Mungo ends with an eerie shot of Alice’s ghost standing by the window, and watching her family, as the Palmers take one last picture before they move out. It’s the same shot from the opening of the movie. Only difference is, they didn’t show Alice standing there at the window at the beginning. So there’s a chance Alice was haunting the house, or her ghost was just watching over the family? Is her spirit trapped there forever? We don’t get definitive answers to these questions, but it’s a genuinely creepy ending. A lot of possibilities for Alice’s ghost that could go so many ways, and it makes you wonder if the Palmer family is actually in a position, where they can truly move on.

If I have to complain about one big thing, it’s Lake Mungo constantly relying on the footage or the pics of Alice’s ghost standing around throughout the house. After Matthew’s hoax is exposed, it’s revealed that new footage of Alice’s ghost is actually real during the tail end of the movie. It just gets so redundant and tiresome after you’ve seen it so many times. I get the whole point of what they were going for. It’s supposed to be spooky and shocking to see Alice in the house, because we’re not sure what her intentions are for hanging around. But you can only get so much out of the same or similar images of Alice standing around with this emotionless and blank expression on her face.

With all that said, Lake Mungo is still a strong mockumentary horror film. The found-footage elements perfectly fit within the story, and director Joel Anderson does a good job of taking a serious approach to this one. News reports, family photos, and home movies are all used to add to Lake Mungo’s strong sense of realism. There’s also that one gruesome image of Alice’s corpse after she drowned. It’s the only image of brutality in the movie, but it’s definitely strong enough to remember.

If you can really suspend disbelief for Lake Mungo, and put yourself in the mindset that you’re watching an actual documentary, it’s easy to appreciate the fine details. In the end, Lake Mungo effectively accomplishes its mission, with a no nonsense style of storytelling, for a somber and tragic series of events involving an innocent teenage girl. 

Rating- 8/10