LAKE MUNGO, though a rare Antipodean entry into the canon, is the latest genre film to explore the notion of “found footage” horror. It would appear a mere coincidence that, in release terms, it emerges so soon after the thematically very similar PARANORMAL ACTIVITY : both movies feature prominent characters setting up fixed cameras in their house to record what appears to be supernatural phenomena. It is among the most intelligent and well constructed examples of its type in the years since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT started a trend.
One of the most pleasing things about the movie is that it boils down to a subtle, involving and poignant old-fashioned ghost story that just happens to have been told using the 21st century equivalent of literature’s first person : faux-documentary vox pops, video cameras, phone cameras, digital photos. Clever misdirection takes the story in surprising directions as (reminiscent of GHOSTWATCH, another key entry in this movement) what we think have been a series of “hauntings” turn out to be very human hoaxes – but this sting in the tale leads to more pertinent and sinister revelations in the second half.
LAKE MUNGO takes the fake-documentary format seen in many films since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and its companion piece CURSE OF THE BLAIR WITCH and pulls it off with conviction thanks to earnest, credible, non-self conscious performances all round. It largely takes the form of underplayed, straight-to-camera recollections by various involved personnel though the editing is judicious enough to ensure it never becomes repetitive.
At the eponymous location in New South Wales, troubled 16 year old Talia Zucker disappears on a family trip – and turns up tragically drowned days later. Her parents and her brother attempt to move on but, through the interviews, we learn of how they came to believe her presence haunts the house. The brother sets up his camera in the hope of capturing her post-mortem image on tape, and a psychic (bringing the movie’s only humour – he changed his name to Ray just to sound friendlier – though the script and actor refreshingly avoid cheap caricature) conducts a séance that is also recorded. Investigations into the dead girl’s personal life reveal a deeply unhappy girl involved in very questionable underage sex acts with the married couple next door – and, crucially, apparently haunted ahead of time by her own untimely, imminent death.
Without any overt horror, shock effects or lazy audience manipulation, LAKE MUNGO is a genuinely, pervasively eerie picture. Attuned to a well plotted, gripping and unsettling central mystery, the format works perfectly and enhances, rather than detracts from, the chills. As previously evidenced by the best movies of this kind, it revives an inexplicit form of horror reliant on the audience’s imagination that seemed all but lost in favour of in-your-face CG FX and smarmy self-awareness.
Like some of its forebears, the movie generates its creeps from forcing us to look into the darkness and shadows for non-corporeal forms that may or may not be there but, ultimately, it turns into something different and even more unnerving : a haunting, moving story of someone very young who somehow knew she was going to die. It never overplays its cards and, just when you think the film might have undermined its own spooky elements, it pulls off a devastating reveal : a single, grainy, phone-cam shot of the girl’s “ghost” before she dies, that ranks as one of the creepiest, most hard-to-shake movie images of the past year.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
