tm-juli This Australian picture is without a doubt a scary flick. It is a difficult movie to sell, because it doesn't work in conventional horror movie ethics like the popular horror movies nowadays, which make bank in 2017. And also "Paranormal Activity" is an easy comparison, because of its found footage approach, "Lake Mungo" is pretty different in what it's trying to accomplish. "Lake Mungo" depicts grief. Grief of parents, trying to figure out if or why her daughter suddenly died. Grief of the older brother, who's stuck with his mourning mom and dad. The scariness doesn't (only) lie within the supernatural, but mostly within the effect, such tragedies have on the family members. But the ones who like their ghost stories won't be disappointed, for there is some creepy home-video footage and very unsettling pixelated imagery. The movie doesn't tell you everything, so your mind will have to do the work, what makes the end product a lot more scary than over-explaining the background story or the mythology of something. I am someone who is easily frightened by a found footage movie. I love "The Blair Witch Project" and some "Paranormal Activity"-movies (especially the first one) and "Unfriended" and "Rec", because you are engaged in those movies in a very different way, than in conventional horror flicks. And "Lake Mungo" is a perfect addition to the found footage movies, who use the technique the right way. It uses all kinds of amateur formats, from camcorder to mobile-phone-camera and perfectly uses the low definition to create some of the most unsettling images you've seen. Sadly the audio suffers from the absolute dedication to only amateur and documentary filmmaking. The music and the background sound is always louder as the people speaking, which is not very pleasant and pretty disturbing (which should be a good thing in a horror movie). Also you really have to be in the mood for this movie and ready to let you creep out by low definition photographs and the unsettling meaning behind them, instead of demon faces and loud jump scares. If not, you could be annoyed or bored.But if you can ignore the very weak audio mixing and you can get into the experience, you're in for a treat. A very slow-burn horror story, with some very terrifying themes and haunting images.

quinimdb So many modern horror movies have gone for the "found footage" style that no one has realised that the faux documentary approach could be much more unsettling. "Lake Mungo" is a film that prefers the more realistic, quiet approach to horror, that is much less viscerally "scary" per se, but more unsettling, and it definitely leaves a more lasting impact after the film is over.The film begins with a death and the film could be summarized as a series of attempts for the family of the girl who died to find closure, or acceptance. It is a very subtle film that builds slowly, but never fails to be surprising. It is filled with a sense of dread and despair in every scene, not just outright horror.The family's attempts at closure begin with noticing strange occurrences of their daughter, Alice, in photos and videos 6 months after her sudden death by drowning, and her body's identification. From here and throughout the film, it is unclear whether these supposedly paranormal incidents are the family's grief getting to them and making them believe Alice is still there, or if there is actually something supernatural happening. Much of the film, even after the ending is incredibly ambiguous, and many aspects of Alice and her death and whatever follows go unexplained, and this only adds to the strange realism and mystery of the film. Even though I went into the film knowing it was fake, about half way through the film I actually began to think I might've been wrong because of how incredibly lifelike the performances, dialogue, and style of the film was. Everything in it aided this feeling that it was a REAL documentary. It was edited and shot like a documentary, with the only actual shots filmed by the documentarians being the interviews, and the rest being poorly shot footage that looked the part, whether it was VHS style home video cameras or flip phone footage, everything felt real, including the absolute lack of jumpscares. This makes the revelation near the end so effective.What the film is grounded on, however, is not its attempts to scare the viewer, but the family's attempts to accept the death of a loved one. This previously mentioned revelation is jot only incredibly scary, but serves the metaphor for the grief of the family. Ultimately, what the family needed in order to accept Alice's death was not the fact that she is still with them, but a feeling that she had accepted her death as well. They really needed to know that it wasn't as sudden for her as it was for them.

dutchchocolatecake I really wanted to like this movie, but I almost fell asleep halfway through it. That hasn't happened to me since the Europa Report, which is saying something. This movie had great acting, great atmosphere, and an overall genuine feel to it. Sadly, it just didn't live up to it's own potential.There's a lot that could have made this movie better: 1. Shorten the time to about an hour which is typical for a documentary style special. A lot of it could have been cut out for brevity's's sake.2. Allow the ghost photos of the teenage girl to be real. I thought it was a real cop out and a major interruption to the story when it was revealed that the brother was faking the pictures. The end of the movie would have been more satisfying had the ghost pictures built up to the big reveal later.3. Nobody needed to know about a teenage girl's sex life. Nobody needed to see some old pervert taking advantage of his babysitter. I thought that was tacky and unnecessary to the overall storyline. FYI, if you needed to see that then you have issues beyond what a message board can help with.4. Expand the psychic's role in the storyline. The trick with the tapes was original and could have played a bigger role overall.5. Make the girl's death more meaningful than a spontaneous drowning. Tie it into a local legend or something.

eddie_baggins An extremely low budget and low key Australian horror done in the faux-documentary style that has now well and truly worn out its welcome, Lake Mungo is impressive in what it does with limited resources and its ambition is to be commended but a big problem with this now cult film is that it's sadly not very scary.Whilst suitably creepy at times as Lake Mungo wears on towards it's slight 80 minute run time the films initial chilling set-up slowly descends into something that becomes unfortunately tiresome even though the film's final credits scenes provide some unnerving finishing moments.While criticisms can be easily made of Lake Mungo's inability to capitalize on its promising cornerstones director Joel Anderson certainly must be commended for sticking to his low-budget guns and delivering a mock-doc that to the uninitiated may absolutely seem like a legitimate documentary! Using grainy phone footage, good use of talking heads and fake news reports, Anderson crafts a tale that actually feels real even if the story its telling becomes a little far-fetched and lacking. Telling the story of the sad demise of young Alice Palmer in this way allows Anderson to hide the films limitations in ways that don't take away from the films central premise and only some clunky delivery of dialogue really gives Lake Mungo's sleight of hand away.One of the more impressive Australian horrors of recent times (although that's not entirely an amazing feat) and perhaps the best locally made example of a faux documentary yet produced (again not exactly tough competition), Lake Mungo has clearly in the years since its release found an appreciative audience that it failed to find upon initial runs these now many moons ago and you could do a lot worse than making Lake Mungo your horror fix over the slowly dying Paranormal Activity franchise or any other such higher profile wannabe.3 buried cell phones out of 5