🟩 Lake Mungo (2008) Review - Never Been More Terrified | Film Waffle

 

Lake Mungo (2008) directed by Joel Anderson

Grief and horror are a natural pairing. 

If a film executes it well, you get something like Hereditary. Heart-wrenching and horrific. 

If a film executes it decently, you get something like The Night House. Thrilling, but a tad flat.

If a film executes it poorly, you get something like The Babadook. Annoying and preachy.

But sometimes. On very rare occasions. There is a movie that nails the intersection of these emotions perfectly. Then you get a Lake Mungo.

I discovered it in 2021. 

It was a dark and stormy night. My sister was busy going into labor, and she asked me to dogsit. I plopped down on the couch with my laptop and a blanket. A big ol' Rottweiler slept at my feet. 

After browsing r/horror for movie recommendations, I came across an Aussie indie film I'd never heard of. Lake Mungo.

With nothing better to do while my nephew popped out, I queued it up.

And. Boy. I was shivering within the first 30 minutes. Hours after the credits ran, I was still shaking.

We're a few years on from that now. I had to see if Lake Mungo was still the masterpiece I remembered it being. 

Quick Summary

In the town of Ararat, Australia, teen siblings Alice and Matthew Palmer are swimming at a dam. After having his share of the fun, Matthew gets out. Alice stays in the water.

When Matthew returns sometime later, Alice is gone. Missing.

Divers find Alice's body in the water days after her disappearance, apparently having drowned.

What follows is the story of Matthew and parents, Russell and June, as they cope with Alice's death. Complicating matters are the ominous noises coming from Alice's room and the strange shadows passing through the house.

Is it a ghost? Or something more sinister?

Story & Characters

As I said in the intro, I don't think there is a more perfect encapsulation of grief. The sheer amount of familial sorrow you feel while watching is intense. It felt like I lost a loved one. I was that stuck in.

Of course, I thought the writing was great. The dialogue was phenomenal. So real and cutting. But it's also delivered in such a human way. The denial. The confusion. The sense of loss and hopelessness. It's palpable in every scene.

I love how it explored male grief. You don't see that often in horror media. If it's a male in these types of scenarios, you usually get regret or guilt. See Layers of Fear, Hereditary, P.T., etc. 

It's the standard cliche. The women are the ones busy being sad. Meanwhile the guy is busy kicking himself in the corner because he either 1: Did the killing or 2: Was negligent. 

But Lake Mungo does not get caught in that trap.

Matthew and Russell evolve organically in the way they process Alice's death. They throw themselves into their work and passions. They keep their emotions hidden and try to put on a brave face. They engage in self-destructive behavior that they know will backfire. Why? They don't know. These are very male responses to traumatic events.

Honestly, hats off to Martin Sharpe and David Pledger as Matthew and Russell. They did an excellent job. Especially when the suppressed emotions finally boil over. Broke my heart.

Regarding the cliche mentioned above, one could even say it inverts it. Because it is June, played by Rosie Traynor, who feels the most regret. She is our main protagonist, and although she wasn't present at the time of Alice's death, she still feels the most dejected. Unlike the boys, she doesn't want to close the door on Alice and cope. She wants to find out what happened and why. 

A mother who wasn't there for her child and wants to understand where everything went so wrong. That's a human emotion if ever there was one. Zuckerberg could never.

And that's really the long and short of it. It's a found-footage documentary, so the characters have to be fantastic, and their deliveries must be on point. I'm happy to say that for the entirety of this film, they were.

As far as the scares go, it's a subtle creeping dread. A fear of the unknown, yes. But a fear of something that is also plausible. Not necessarily realistic, but plausible. And that makes it all the more terrifying. At least to me. That's probably also the reason why home invasion is another genre of horror I adore. It's not some pie in the sky alien menace doing a murder spree. 

No. It's real people expressing real emotions on something that could really happen.

The only thing that even remotely comes close to the willies this movie gave me was Sinister, but that film shat the bed around the halfway point. Sinister review forthcoming /wink.

The climax is absolute peak. It simultaneously solves so much, yet leaves you baffled with more questions. Good questions. Namely "What the actual fuck!?"

Rarely do scares like that feel earned. But with the video. With the overlaying narration. With the slow, agonizing buildup. Holy Christ.

Peak. PEAK!

Even the credits come out with those final gut punches. I'm dead, bro. I'm DEAD. Fuckers got my emotions all screwed up. Not sure if I should be bawling like a baby or screaming like a schoolgirl, but I want to do both.

If I must criticize something, it's that a couple threads are not tied up well.

There's one scene that shows Matthew with bruises all over his body the day following Alice's disappearance. It's brushed upon in one scene. Then it doesn't come up again. 

Like... huh? What happened to that? Where did it go?

The neighbor tape kinda sorta falls within that realm of "Did this plot point really need to be here?" too. I personally didn't mind it. I think it added more to Alice's character. But I can see why some people believe it should have been Chekhov's Gun-ed down.

Mechanics & Structure

I'd previously expressed a love for found-footage films in my very old reviews. My argument being that it immediately makes the scene intimate for the audience by putting themselves right into the scene. They are, quite literally, in the character's hands.

But there's another facet to this that makes Lake Mungo my perfect horror film.

As a teen, I binged 48 Hours and Criminal Minds with my sister. It was our summer vacation bonding time. Piecing through blurry photos and old family videos. Interviewing family and friends to string together timelines and stories. 

God damn. I loved it back then, and I love it now.

By merging these two presentations, Lake Mungo was seemingly made for me.

The soundtrack is also very 48 Hours. There is a discordant ambience in the background of the interviews that fits so well. Revelations are marked with a satisfying, aggressive note that punctuates the emotions and makes my skin crawl. It's an incredible display of sound design.

Conclusion

This is shaping up to be one of my shorter movie reviews because there's so little to nitpick. I loved so much about this movie. From the characters to the performances to the sound to the presentation. Everything is beautifully done. Beautifully terrifying!

Sometimes I forget horror films are meant to be scary. Stupid, I know. But slashers are silly, and body horror is boring, and fellow Aussie film The Babadook is playing with its belly button in the corner. Lake Mungo, though, is like a shock to my system. It reminded me of what movies in this genre are supposed to do.

Admittedly, I wasn't shivering for hours afterward as I did during my first watch in 2021. However, there were more than a couple moments that sent a chill down my spine. 

If you're up for a found-footage horror that will remind you how scary the genre should be, this movie is the absolute best of the best. A worthy 10/10. 

🟩 Rating: 10/10