Lake Mungo is a 2008 Australian psychological horror film written and directed by Joel Anderson. Presented in the pseudo-documentary format with elements of found footage and docufiction, it is Anderson's only film. It follows a family trying to come to terms with the loss of their daughter Alice (Talia Zucker) after she drowns and the potentially supernatural events they experience after it.
Lake Mungo premiered at the Sydney Film Festival on 18 June 2008, and was screened at the American South by Southwest film festival in March 2009. It received positive reviews from critics and has gained a cult following since its release, being included by IndieWire in "Top 15 Best Found Footage Movies", and ranked by Variety as the most terrifying found footage film.[1][2]
Plot
While swimming with her family at a dam in Ararat, 16-year-old Alice Palmer disappears. Days later, her body is found in a stormwater drainage basin, and her parents, Russell and June, are called to identify the remains; Russell confirms the body, while June refuses to view it. Ten days after the funeral, the family begins hearing unexplained noises, and Alice’s brother Mathew develops mysterious bruises. June and Russell describe unsettling encounters involving what they believe to be Alice’s apparition — June through recurring nightmares of a drenched Alice, and Russell in a single incident in which an apparition aggressively confronted him. Mathew begins experimenting with photography, capturing what appears to be Alice’s figure in the backyard and, later, faintly in a photograph taken at the lake.
Believing Alice may still be alive, the Palmers request an exhumation and DNA test, which conclusively identifies the body as hers. During this period, Mathew installs cameras throughout the house to record possible sightings, and they appear to capture images of Alice. Seeking guidance, June consults self-proclaimed psychic Ray Kemeney, who conducts a séance but cannot explain the events. Months later, Mathew admits that he fabricated the "ghostly" photos and videos in the hope of prompting the exhumation and giving June closure for not viewing Alice’s body.
A home video recorded while the Palmers are away shows what appears to be Alice’s apparition and captures their neighbour Brett Toohey, whom she had babysat for, searching her bedroom. June subsequently finds a hidden videotape depicting Alice in a threesome with Brett and his wife, Marissa. Russell concludes that Brett had been searching for the tape after hearing about Alice’s death. The Tooheys soon sell their home and disappear, and the Palmers are notified that any legal action would likely be dismissed as the encounter would be considered consensual.
Ray later reveals that Alice visited him months before her death, reporting recurring dreams about drowning, being dead, and her mother being unable to see or help her, fears also recorded in her journal. Alice’s boyfriend, Jason Whittle, provides mobile-phone footage from a school trip to Lake Mungo, during which Alice buried something beneath a tree. The Palmers travel to the site and recover her phone. Its footage shows Alice walking along the shoreline and encountering a bloated, disfigured version of herself — identical to the body later recovered at the dam — floating rapidly toward her.
The Palmers come to believe that Alice wanted them to understand what she had experienced. They move out of their home, assuming the haunting has ended. A final photograph taken during their departure reveals a faint figure of Alice in a window, and footage shown during the end credits — including and not including the fabrications by Matthew — to show Alice genuinely present elsewhere in the background.
Joel Anderson wrote the bulk of the screenplay in 2005, at a time when he was finding it difficult to acquire funding for a different screenplay, which required a much larger budget. After discussions with people who would become collaborators on Lake Mungo, he decided to write a fictional documentary-style story that he could film on a low budget. When asked about his main inspiration for creating the script, he dismissed the idea of it being a supernatural film and expressed his opinion that it is "meant to be an exploration of grief". He also cited a curiosity as to how "technology is used to record people's lives and sort of tracks memories, and how technology mediates a lot of our experiences". Initial financing was attained through private investors, after which the production team approached the Australian government's film funding body Screen Australia for the rest of the budget.
During casting, low-profile actors were sought in an effort to maintain an authentic documentary feel. The film was shot over a period of approximately five weeks using both film and video formats. The script featured only the outline of the story and no written dialogue, so the actors were tasked with improvising their scenes; Anderson also served as the offscreen interviewer in the film's interview scenes, though he chose to remain uncredited.[3][4]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 24 critics gave Lake Mungo a positive review; the website's critical consensus reads: "Haunting and meticulously crafted, Lake Mungo transcends typical found-footage horror with its convincing performances, rich emotional resonance, and subtly eerie imagery."[12] The film was nominated for Best Horror Movie at the Fright Meter Awards in 2010.[13]
It was included by IndieWire in "Top 15 Best Found Footage Movies",[2] by Vulture in "Top 25 Best Found Footage Horror Movies",[14] by Screen Rant in "Top 20 Best Found Footage Horror Movies",[15] by Collider in "Top 15 Best International Found Footage Movies",[16] by YardBarker in "Top 20 Best Found Footage Horror Films",[17] by /Film in "Top 25 Scariest Found Footage Horror Movies",[18] and by Paste in "Top 35 Best Found Footage Horror Movies".[19]
Russell Edwards of Variety called it an "ambitious, restrained, and well-mounted mockumentary" and praised its musical score, but critiqued its dim lighting and lack of scripted dialogue.[20] Andrew L. Urban of Urban Cinefile wrote that "this superbly constructed and executed film gets everything right, to the smallest detail, as it draws us into the imagined scenario".[21] Simon Miraudo of Quickflix called it "a mournful, dreamlike examination of the hole left in the heart of a family after a death" and awarded it 5/5 stars.[22] Simon Foster of the Special Broadcasting Service declared it to be "one of the most impressive debut films from this country in many years" and further commented that "the young director has created a nerve-rattler unlike any film the Australian industry has produced".[23]
Megan Lehmann of The Hollywood Reporter noted the film's "compelling slow build", "surreal atmospherics", and "restrained soundtrack that works on a primal level [and] cleaves close to reality". She also praised its fusion of supernatural elements with substantive themes on family and loss, concluding that "this ambitious exploration of death and its aftershocks will reward more discerning genre fans".[24] Conversely, a review published by Bloody Disgusting concluded that "the ultimate problem with Lake Mungo is that the filmmakers had too many good ideas crammed into one film and not enough time to tell all their tales".[25]
In 2020, Mike Sprague of Dread Central included the film on his list of 10 underrated horror films to watch on Amazon Prime during COVID-19 lockdowns.[26] Later that year, Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting went against the publication's initial negative review to write that "the scares come subtle, often lurking in the background for only the most observant to notice [...] [it's a] unique horror movie, a slow-burn mystery full of twists and one seriously unnerving jump scare for the ages".[27] Filmmaker Mike Flanagan, in his review on Letterboxd, praised the film for being "exceptional, terrifying, and ultimately heartbreaking. The movie will stick with you, and the more you think about its lonely, tragic implications, the more it will haunt you."[28]
Following the release of Lake Mungo, Anderson has kept an extremely low profile; he has not written or directed another film, given no interviews since 2009, and has no known social media pages. His elusiveness has contributed to Lake Mungo's mystique as a cult film,[29] which he suggested may have been part of his intention: "I think we were thinking it'd be nice if we could make a film that was kind of a curiosity, but if you saw it years from now you wouldn't know anything about where it came from. You'd be wondering—is it real, is it not real?"[30] He eventually returned to the film industry in 2023 as an executive producer and script editor on the supernatural horror film Late Night with the Devil.[31][32]
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