Lake Mungo (Joel Anderson, 2008)

Unique, unsensational, and utterly chilling

After losing their daughter in a tragic drowning accident while on vacation, a family begin to experience strange phenomenon around their home — most notably appearances by the deceased girl in photos and videos.

It is very creepy.

In a photo of their back yard, she stands — almost imperceptible — against the fence. In a video set up to film an apparently fruitless séance, the girl appears outside the room in the hallway.

Her father recounts a time he woke in the middle of the night and went into her bedroom; the girl strode in as though she was still alive and busied herself at her desk — it was only after a few minutes that she sensed he was sitting in the room, and turned on him and screamed for him to get out.

A psychic/parapsychologist is recruited. The girl’s body is exhumed.

Piece by piece, the evidence for the haunting is stacked up, and the effect is chilling — both in the firsthand testimonials of the family and the visual evidence where something unnatural lurks but is not immediately obvious.

Lake Mungo is not like other horror films. Filmed in the style of a documentary (I hate using the term “mockumentary,” which suggests something comedic, which this is most definitely not) it is about as unsensational a horror movie as you could imagine.

The actors play it real. Their interviews that recount their experiences could absolutely be one of dozens of other similar shows that ran on cable TV at the dawn of the millennium. Except this is an Australian movie, so even the framing is much more lowkey than a typical American production might be.

It’s restrained, understated, and unexciting by design — so that when proof of the ghost becomes apparent, it legitimately sends a shiver down your spine.

Of course, this isn’t just a movie about a family sitting around and talking about weird photos. That’s the bulk of the first half, sure — and it does a great job of establishing the tone of the film and setting up the spookiness. But halfway through, the film does something unexpected and potentially self-sabotaging. Fortunately, it manages to recover, and the second half of the film reveals a hell of a lot more about what their daughter suffered prior to her death.

Without getting too spoilery, suffice to say that it turns out she had shades of Laura Palmer about her — and that she too had horrifying encounters with supernatural beings prior to her death.

As all of this new information comes to be known, the film returns to photos and video clips previously shown — and sure enough, evidence of these new revelations was visible there all along.

The film compounds as it progresses. Yet all the while, it maintains its stoic, sober tone. This contrast between the mundane and extraordinary is what makes the film as ominous as it does.

As with so many great horror films, Lake Mungo is an exploration of grief — but it is also a celebration of life and the unexplained. It is an utterly unique take on the found footage horror subgenre.