Lake Mungo

Plot synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer drowns while swimming with her family at a dam in Ararat, Australia. After she dies her teen brother Matthew uses cameras set about the house to record what seem to be images of Alice's ghost appearing in the family home. It's discovered that Matthew was actually setting up the "sightings" of his dead sister to give the family reason to exhume Alice's body and give his mother closure.
Upon closer review, one of the hoax video tapes captures the Palmer's neighbor Brett in Alice's bedroom looking for something. Alice was often a babysitter for Brett's and his wife's child. After a search, Alice's mother finds a video tape hidden in the bedroom showing Alice in a sexual encounter with Brett and his wife.
A psychic that the family had contacted earlier, when they were unsure if Matthew's films were real, finally admits that Alice had met with him several months before her death and had told him she was having dreams about drowning, being dead and her mother not being able to see or help her. Alice's boyfriend comes forward with cell phone video footage showing Alice on a school trip to Lake Mungo. The video shows Alice extremely distraught as she frantically digs into the sand at the base of tree with her bare hands.
Alice's family travels to Lake Mungo and finds the tree seen in the cellphone video. Digging at its base they discover Alice had buried her cell phone. The video footage on Alice's cell phone shows her walking down the darkened shoreline of the lake by herself using her cellphone as a flashlight. She comes upon a figure in the distance and walks up to it. The light from the cellphone reveals the figure is Alice herself but appearing bloated and dead just as Alice's body had been after being recovered from the lake in the beginning of the film.
Alice's family then goes home and moves out of their house, feeling that Alice had simply wanted them to know who she really was and what she had seen. The film's mid-credit scenes reveal that Alice had actually manifested in Matthew's hoax pictures and videos without anybody noticing.

Tags: paranormal

Review:
Lake Mungo succeeds at being not only a chilling ghost story, but a film about grief.
Lake Mungo really is a very simple film, it follows the Palmer family as they deal with the loss of Alice (their daughter/sister).
It is filmed in a documentary style, in which the family/friends/work associates are interviewed by an unseen person, with pictures and video footage shown as well.
Recently my awesome homeland have been releasing some damn good horror movies (see Wolf Creek, Rogue, Black Water, Dying Breed, Lucky Country) and Lake Mungo is one of the best.4½/5.
If you like your horror exclusively blood and gore, or need big Hollywood special effects to enjoy a movie, you will undoubtedly be disappointed, but for anyone who appreciates films that slowly get under your skin, and stay with you long after the end credits, Lake Mungo is a must-see..
And speaking of story, unlike most of the other first person horror movies, "Lake Mungo" actually has a good one.
and even better, half way into the movie the ghost thing gets dropped when some rather earthly explanations start to surface and the family looks deeper into the last weeks of her daughters life.
The whole film is shot documentary style with interviews etc.(and let me just say, that if I didn't know this movie was a "mock" horror or whatever you call it, I would have been pet-ri-fied) haha.I was a little iffy:After the first major twist (if you will), but I promise, keep watching because the end is worth the wait.
People are comparing it to paranormal activity, and I get that, but the matter a fact is that these two movies are not very similar, the only thing really is that they use some home movie style footage.Anyway, its a good movie if you like slow movies, and good scares.
LAKE MUNGO has already been bought for a US remake but this little indie original from Australia is the real deal: a genuinely scary ghost film like THE SIXTH SENSE or the 1961 film THE INNOCENTS.
An unsettling ghost story that doesn't rely on cheap jump scares or horror clichés, Lake Mungo is a welcome breath of fresh air to the genre.
It plays very much like a real exploratory documentary, so as a result is very believable, helped in part by convincing acting and scripting (I assume this was mostly scripted, which in itself is unusual for this sub-genre - but must have a significant level of scripting due to the factual based story telling).However, that being said, I do have a number of issues that prevent me from classifying this as a good film.
It can be quite disappointing when you go the lenght of a film waiting for a revelation for it not to appear - or at least not to the extent you were lead to believe.I think the main crux of this being that the story is based in a normal, relatively happy middle class teenager - so there is nothing about the ghost that is sinister or potentially threatening.
Lake Mungo follows the familiar mockumentary style that has become the stable of many a modern day horror film.
Lake Mungo feels like someone watched Twin Peaks a few too many times then stumbled across The Last Broadcast and decided they want a J Horror moment as the cliff hanger moment.
This is one of the rare occasions that the idea of Hollywood remaking this film is actually interesting because hopefully the new writers will expand on the good concept and deliver whole lot more action, horror and drama..
The main difference here is that Bridge To Terabithia is a thoughtful view, while Lake Mungo only manages to feel like a glorified episode of 911.Lake Mungo succeeds at being a story about grief, and about the subject of how exactly a person's death effects the lives of their loved ones, as well as speculations what happens to that person.
Makes 'Paranormal Activity' look like the cheap piece of garbage it was.The acting and editing sells the story as a real documented paranormal experience with all the twists and turns needed to keep it's audience on their toes, gripping their seat.Somewhere between an episode of 'Unsolved Mysteries' & 'The Blair Witch Project.'An original new look at the way ghost stories can be told.
It's the closest thing I've seen to simulating a real documentary feel; better than "Paranormal Activity", "The Last Broadcast", "Blair Witch" and the like.
It's a chilling feeling, still, and you might be a little on edge for the remainder of the day after watching Lake Mungo- but if you're a horror fan, this should be your cup of tea.
The film is based on the revelations of the family after-the-fact about what caused her death and how digging into her past lead to much darker secrets than they ever anticipated, but yet the documentary-like nature of the film manages to make it feel like what happens is not that scary or chilling at all.
From the start, with the photographs and her appearance in them to the neighbors' video footage finding her on them to the consultations with the paranormal experts and all this, it's never given any sort of imposing nature about being terrified of what's going on, as it's all about being done after it's already happened because it's a documentary about what happened instead of letting everything unfold in real-time.
There's a lot of potentially-creepy manners and actions that happen through these actions through the family's drama but yet none of what happens is given any sort of feeling like it's scary or chilling and it really makes the film just trod along so lifelessly that it's hardly all that enjoyable the way it's presented here.
quite simply, cable networks' haunted house documentaries and ghost hunting shows are far scarier, and give you actual, real people, or at the very least, the "cream of the crop" of hoaxers.Last but definitely not least, I felt insulted by the shots provided during the closing credits, and wasn't going to bother letting them all play out (I assume there were more).
It makes no sense to break the strictly realistic documentary format for the credits, and only steals scares from the actual movie.I hate to slag on a film that's well made and has good intentions, but I would rather have just watched an episode of Ghost Adventures..
All I can say about this movie is WTF the concept is the same as your Blair Witch,Paranormal Activity and so on but somewhere between the halfway point of the movie its almost as the director lost all his sense of thinking and drops a twist which makes you go huh,and then about another 45 minutes or so later when you see the ending credits that is when you will have the reaction WHAT THE F***.I read another user reviews about this movie and was looking forward to a good scare unfortunately this one does not deliver anything of such sort.I would definitely say pass on this one,i will give it 2 starts simply for the fact that it was shot well other then that hopefully the 2011 remake delivers more then this..
I have seen many unsettling movies in the past few years—Irreversible, Inside, Audition to name a few—but these movies, while disturbing, aren't all that frightening.When I started Lake Mungo, I wasn't expecting to find anything that was able to quench my thirst for horror, and maybe that's why I ended up enjoying it so much.
One of the only movies like this that gets it right, I would recommend Lake Mungo for a rainy night when ur feeling a lil tired and wanna watch a cozy true crime sort of story..
Perhaps it should be called a 'faux-documentary' horror film instead.Every thing about this movie is great, and this is coming from someone who finds most ghost stories rather boring.
But Lake Mungo is performed so incredibly that I could imagine many viewers thinking that it was actually a real documentary about a case of possible supernatural activity.I wouldn't say the movie is scary so much as it is unsettling.
It's shot frame by frame in documentary format, much like the old television series Unsolved Mysteries, telling you the story of Alice by using interview footage of family and friends, and reenactments of key events of the case.
After all, a lot of the time the truth is scarier than anything Hollywood can come up with.The acting in this movie is very believable, it really makes you feel like you're looking at the actual people involved and not actors reenacting their story, unlike a lot of the documentary style movies, they do a great job at showing the families emotions during tough times.
Mixing the conventions of real-crime documentaries and found-footage horror entries, director Joel Anderson crafts a compelling, chilling tale of a teenager's accidental death, its impact on her family, and the many secrets revealed along the way.
It presents a story of tragedy and grief which follow the death of the daughter, Alice.The film itself is delivered in a documentary format which suits its slow pace well.
Lake Mungo is a very well created documentary movie about the experiences of a family after their daughter drowns.
But the things that happen in this one...it's been a long time since a horror film made me feel this way.When I sat down to watch it, all I knew was the basic plot.
Brings me to the one flaw of this movie; the film is quite slow already and could have done without that part slowing it down even more.All together Lake Mungo has the ability to keep your attention while exploring interesting ideas about ghosts, loss, life and death..
Jam-packed with one twist after another and never letting its viewers figure out just where exactly its plot is headed, Lake Mungo is one of the most underrated works of mockumentary horror that's cleverly crafted, ingeniously executed and takes a turn on every available opportunity to sustain a sense of uneasiness throughout its runtime.Lake Mungo centres around the Palmer family that is mourning the accidental death of their young daughter after she drowns while swimming at a dam.
As the Palmers attempt to move on from the unexpected tragedy that befell them, they experience a set of inexplicable events in their house & eventually unearth a dark secret about their deceased girl.Written & directed by Joel Anderson, Lake Mungo is staged like a documentary, filled with archival footages, family photographs & personal interviews but an aura of mystery surrounding the death & an unsettling vibe in the aftermath sequences is consistently felt throughout its runtime.
The grainy & low-quality of the recorded footage or photos further compels the viewers to observe each frame more closely, and although its documentary style is borrowed, the film tick marks all the elements that make them gripping in the first place.What definitely works in its favour is that it manages to keep the interest alive from start to finish and rarely follows a predictable route, for whenever the audience tries to connect the dots, a new twist surfaces & steers them in a different direction.
Camera is sort of fixated on time-lapse photography while the cast provides added authenticity with their sincere inputs.On an overall scale, Lake Mungo is a highly riveting psychological horror, deeply embedded with supernatural elements, and offers an interesting take on grief plus how people deal with it.
All of this is done in the style of a pure documentary, going so far to include "news footage" and "police videos;" as it plays out, we see interviews from the daughter – Alison's – dad Russell, mom June, and brother Mathew; also interviewed are friends and family, and the psychic, Ray.Everything is done right: the story is an interesting one; it is scored beautifully; the cinematography is evocative and moody; the characters are incredibly fleshed out and the acting is highly, highly convincing, and if you let yourself go you could easily believe that what you're watching is a bona fide documentary, and while it's not scary as such (you're not going to be jumping out of your seats with this one), this ultra-realism is what gives the film its chill, and what makes it a hell of a lot more effective (and superior) than the other documentary / found-footage-style movies out there.
Added to that is an underlying sadness and a profound sense of loss, and it's because of this that Lake Mungo is elevated into something a lot more than a simple "horror" or "mystery" film, at times seeming to work on all your senses and emotions.
I hate found footage movies, and documentary style flicks, but this was a excellent example that there is still reason for having hope.Although Lake Mungo has a slow start, and stays at one spot too long in the beginning, this is fast forgotten when your emotions and body receives the first vibes of scary feelings, at that moment the fake documentary grabs your eyes, and makes you sit on the edge of your seat.
She did drown and her body was found and a ghost was never seen in the whole film WARNING DO NOT WATCH It actually made me and my friends mad that we wasted our time hoping for it to get better..
They let the movie really feel like a documentary at times, since they look like a real grieving family.
"Lake Mungo" is filmed in a documentary format— compiled of interviews, video and news footage, and photographs, it details the story of an Australian family who fall victim to disturbing supernatural events after the drowning death of their teenage daughter."Lake Mungo" is a slow goer, perhaps slower than most horror audiences would expect, but I'm not even sure I'd categorize this as a horror film; maybe a supernatural mystery or something along those lines, rather.
Fans of gore or jump-scares will be disappointed; the film has none.Released (probably somewhat out of place) in the U.S. in 2010 as part of the After Dark Horrorfest 4, the movie garnered enough attention that a U.S. production company planned to remake (and ruin) it in 2009, but to date, I have not seen any more information on that (fingers crossed).Also, make sure to stay tuned in during the ending credits.Despite these few flaws, I believe writer/director Joel Anderson accomplishes what he set out to do with LAKE MUNGO.
Skimming through a number of reviews you can see that many tuned in to it expecting a boo jump horror movie, while there's also the inevitable hoards of scary film fans who see the word supernatural and think they are getting the new Exorcist.
I think that Lake Mungo is on some intermediate point, because even though it tells an interesting story which has some good moments of tension, its only "hook" is repeated so many times that it runs the risk of becoming ridiculous.The "fake documentaries" tend to fall into opposite extremes: some of them exaggerate so much that they ruin the "realism" with an obvious artificiality; and other ones sin of an excessive subtleness, and as a consequence, they end up being ambiguous and not completely satisfactory.
Lake Mungo falls into the second category, but there are some moments in which it gets close to the first one, due to the use of some clichés from the horror cinema which feel completely out of place into the sober tone from the movie.Anyway, I found the subject of the "ghost photographs" to be interesting, at the same time that the movie offers some very good moments of suspense.
When i bought Lake Mungo i thought it was gonna be another poor movie just like lots of others released these days , the only reason i bought it was because it was Australian made and most of the horror i've seen coming out of OZ has been good.
It's a fake documentary about a family experiencing supernatural events in the wake of their daughter's death ( she drowned at Lake Mungo ).
I've heard the film be compared to Paranormal Activity a few times and i can understand that with it being a ghost movie and it being made to look real but thats where the similarities end.
Lake Mungo is about sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer, who drowns in the local dam, and her family, who, since after her death, have been plagued with paranormal events around their house.
All of the clues lead back to Lake Mungo, where Alice's secrets emerge.The film is shot documentary style and there's a thing that separates this from, say, The Blair Witch Project.
And there are thousands of better horror movies out there than Lake Mungo.
Sure you may like how it's a "beautiful story about grief", but if that's what you're looking for, go watch other drama movies that are way more beautiful, well-paced, well-directed..
Anderson tells his tale of a drowned 16 year old girl whose short life held sad secrets, and the ghost that seems to remain behind as a documentary, complete with talking head interviews with the family and experts, old photographs and home movies, etc.
I guess people who watched this found it dull and couldn't appreciate the efforts not only in filming "Lake Mungo" in such a documentary fashion, but the acting as well.
This movie is only good if you like to see the story of someone who lost a dear person,from start to the end.
The story line of Lake Mungo inter-twanged like a maze, and ends with a touch of supernatural, which makes one wonders if there is ghost or not?
I have seen a lot of movies in the horror genre and have to say this is by far my favorite 'ghost' story ever....Alice is a 16 year old girl who drowns at a dam while picnicking with her family.