2008 Directed by Joel Anderson
After 16-year-old Alice Palmer drowns in a local dam, her family experiences a series of strange, inexplicable events centred in and around their home. Unsettled, the Palmers seek the help of psychic and parapsychologist, who discovers that Alice led a secret, double life. At Lake Mungo, Alice's secret past emerges.
Rosie Traynor David Pledger Martin Sharpe Tania Lentini Cameron Strachan Judith Roberts Robin Cuming Marcus Costello Chloe Armstrong Carole Patullo John Dunn Laurie Dunn Kirsty McDonald James Lawson Phillip Boltin Glenn Luck Simon Wilton Charles Armytage Helen Bath Steve Jodrell Tammy McCarthy Natasha Herbert Michael Ormond Robinson Tamara Donnellan Scott Terrill Stephanie Capiron Courtney Te'ray Kimberley Bumpstead Jason Ball Show All…
Lago Mungo, Озеро Мунго, レイク・マンゴー ～アリス・パーマーの最期の３日間～, Jezero Mungo, אגם מונגו, 먼고 호수, O Segredo de Lake Mungo, O Segredo do Lago Mungo, Mungo Gölü, 蒙哥湖
AustraliaM
Sydney Film Festival
USAR
After Dark Horrorfest
AustraliaM
Brazil
Australia
Brazil
USA
100
I'll never forget the day I saw a ghost. Or at least I thought I did. My family decided to take a trip to Yellowstone National Park, exploring the canyons and wildlife and hot springs. I was 11 at the time. My mom was eager to stay at the Old Faithful Inn, right near the titular geyser. The design of the Inn is stately, a national historic landmark, and I became excited when my dad told ghost stories about the hotel; stories that he probably looked up online before we embarked on the trip. There was one about a bride of a shipping company owner that had long been debunked, her body found in a bloody bathtub with her…
The Filmmakers: “Look at this picture of a ghost. Isn’t it scary? Keep staring at it while we zoom in on it. It’s scary right? Just keep looking, we have to extend the runtime somehow...”
Meticulously crafted dread. Well acted, somber, and filled with numerous moments that made me feel incredibly uneasy—even unnerved. I watched this late last night, alone, and simple yet specific zoom in shots of images on photographs made me uncomfortable sitting in the dark.
I was fully involved with this family's attempt to discover what happened to their daughter, and how the somber story unfolds. I couldn’t help but pick up a Japanese horror vibe/influence buried in the mix, as well as thinking about Twin Peaks solely based on the fact that I’ve always wanted to see Laura Palmer’s mystery told with mockumentry style like this is.
I hadn’t watched this in ten years, but I’m glad I gave it a revisit because…
"I feel like something bad is gonna happen to me. It hasn't reached me yet but it's on its way."
I kinda want to give myself a little slap on the wrist for this, but: if Twin Peaks were documentary-style found footage horror, it might be a bit like this. Its eye is maybe a bit less subtle than Lynch's, relying really heavily on slow zooms up to a grainy image where something tucked into a dark corner becomes clearer as the soundtrack groans and clangs, but I have to admit it's effective, especially when so many of these images evoke that feeling of sleep paralysis and a sensation of some presence looming just out of your vision, haunting your immobilized body.
Grief and dread on tape. Grief and dread in the percolator. Lake Mungo hangs itself on these emotions, dwelling in sorrow and the shadow of a lingering sinister presence.
A rather pleasant surprise here. Mock documentary style film-making in horror is something I can't say I've seen before.
Lake Mungo is incredibly well-acted and does an exceptional job at building a somber and haunting atmosphere. The setting is uneasy and this movie manages to make my stomach turn with its overly-realistic execution and sense of realism.
The screenplay is brilliant. A mock documentary film should not be this good at keeping me invested and fully involved with this family's attempt to discover what happened to their daughter.
Overall, this movie is eerie and dark and can make you feel rather claustrophobic. While it isn't outright frightening, themes of grief and well-executed moments of dread in mock documentary style film-making make for an unexpected level of terror. Definitely worth the watch if you're looking for unique and creative takes on horror.
I mungo, you mungo, he-she-me mungo. Mungoing, mungology, the study of mungo! It’s first grade, Spongebob.
![nathaxnne [hiatus: blast injury]](https://a.ltrbxd.com/resized/avatar/upload/1/9/5/2/4/3/shard/avtr-0-80-0-80-crop.jpg?v=2d9f35eba8){kind=small}
More than any other film I have seen on these matters, 'Lake Mungo' understands and problematizes the phenomena of haunting as phenomena of documentation. Expertly structured in itself as a fictional documentary, the film starts out not simply haunted, but as an artifact of haunting composed of the artifacts of haunting. The gaps between, the shifting qualities of fidelity among what is left of a person once their immediate physical presence is no longer immediately present, in the memories and narratives of others, in what was recorded of and by them, not only the facts of persistence, but the varying manner of this persistence, is at the heart of 'Lake Mungo'. Postscript: As a tangential afterthought, what this movie reminded…
Truly cannot understand why so many people recommend this movie. It was awful.
I’ve said many times: I can forgive ridiculous premises, plot holes, corny stuff and bad special effects, but it’s absolutely unforgivable when a movie is just flat out boring, and Lake Mungo is one of the most boring fucking movies I’ve ever seen.
The “scares” are literally just slow zoom-ins on blurry photographs and that’s it. Nothing else. That’s the whole movie. And you know what the incredibly slow burn all leads up to in the end? Absolutely nothing!
The whole thing felt like it had a lot of potential but doesn’t deliver on even an ounce of it.
1/5 blurry ghost pictures of my bunghole
Was she scared when it happened? Did she wonder where you were? Why she couldn't be saved? Or did she feel like it was her fault? It didn't matter if she tried. It didn't matter if everything worked or felt fine. It happened. No one knows if anything else will happen again. You kept the porch light on for so long, never turning it off or letting the glimmer fail because you hoped she would come back again, or at least get the truth that she wasn't. But it was pointless. She was right behind you, a doorway down, in a place you couldn't see.
Earlier this year I wrote about The Ring on here in an attempt to explain why it was one of only a small handful of horror films to have ever actually scared me. Tonight I'm adding another film to that list. Lake Mungo shook me in a way only one or two other films ever have. It had me physically shaking and watching through my fingers and doing long deep exhales just to try and stay centered. This movie really, really scared me.
And not for any one particular reason, either. It hits all of my horror buttons. It's got the heavily distorted low-quality video sequences from Prince of Darkness and The Ring, found footage bits straight out of (and…
Absolute terror borne from sheer mundanity, emerging from the supernatural only insofar as we look away from the truth. There's something especially horrifying about the utter helplessness of both the haunted and the haunter: for the Palmers it's in the inability to make sense of Alice's ghost, death, and especially her life, whereas for Alice it's her inability to be heard by those she loves. Her existence is limited purely in recordings, reliant on her loved ones dwelling on that past; finding new traces of her presence is so terrifying because it implies there's so much more of her past we're still unaware of, yet also heartbreaking because we never really knew her in life. It is only in death…
